Memphis, reign of Tutankhamun
Meren's eyes flew open as he thrust himself upright, his hand already grasping a dagger. Spinning from his sitting position, he dropped to the floor, crouched, and slashed at the air with the blade. When it hit nothing, he waited, his gaze darting from shadow to shadow. The only sound he heard was his own hard breathing.
Finally he realized where he was-the house of the pirate Othrys. Was it morning already? Feeling foolish, he rose, his shoulders sagging with weariness. Last night he'd barely escaped the men who hunted him. They'd followed the guard only a little way before two of them retraced their steps and ran into him.
It had been a bloody fight. If his attackers had been royal troops, he might not have survived. But they hadn't been, and he'd killed them instead and made his way back here. Neither his guard nor Naram-Sin had returned, and Othrys had sent men looking for them. Meren had fallen asleep waiting for them, wondering who had tried to kill him and how his attackers had known where to find him.
Sleep would be impossible now that his heart was ramming itself against his ribs, so Meren washed and dressed. As he finished, Othrys slammed his chamber door open without asking permission to enter.
Meren scowled at him. "Did you find them?"
"Who? Oh, Naram-Sin. Don't be deceived by his manner. He's a trained warrior. He came back shortly after I sent men looking for him. The guard is dead."
Sighing, Meren shoved the Greek wig on his head and said, "I am sorry."
"I'll find out who did this, but that's not why I'm here." The pirate stepped into the doorway and said, "Come."
An old woman followed him into the room. Her head hung between her shoulders because her back was bent with age. This crooked posture caused her ash-white hair to swing forward, covering her face. She wore a stained, wrinkled long-sleeved garment that hung about her thin body. The old woman carried a basket of wet laundry in her arms and shuffled with tiny steps. Meren stared at her in surprise, for at home no laundress would ever have business with him. She minced to a halt before him, and Meren surveyed her from gray head to small feet. Small feet. He knew those little feet, and he was certain they didn't belong to an aged laundress.
"Bener!"
His daughter's head snapped up, and he beheld a grinning, self-satisfied young woman. She dropped her basket and flung herself into his arms. Meren forgot his astonishment and squeezed her hard, burying his face in the rough wig that surrounded her head.
"Father," she whispered. "I've been so frightened for you."
Her voice jolted him from the luxury of relief. He straightened and held her at arms' length.
"Damnation. What are you doing here?"
"Abu got word to us that you were here. He sent a message through my laundress, as I was using her to get messages to Cousin Ebana."
Meren was staring at his daughter in disbelief. "The laundress would be questioned and her basket searched."
"She was questioned, but they didn't search. Not this particular kind of laundry."
Meren glanced into the basket at the clean, wet bundles. His eyes widened as he recognized them, and he looked at Bener with renewed astonishment. Then he scowled again.
"You must have avoided Kysen as well as the king's spies, for I know he wouldn't allow you to come here."
"Father, there's no time for arguing. I've important news."
Othrys came to stand beside Bener. "She's right. Listen to her, and scold later."
Wavering between fear for Bener and the knowledge that she and the pirate were right, Meren nodded. Bener smiled with pride as she recounted her successful ruse for passing messages and told what she, Kysen, and Ebana had discovered.
"So Ebana sought help from an old friend in the office of records and tithes," she said. "This man owes Cousin Ebana many favors, and he has arranged to meet both Turi and Mose."
"How?" Meren asked.
"Ebana's friend is overseer of records and royal gifts, and he has sent word to each separately that there has arisen a question of title to the lands awarded them by pharaoh. Each thinks a rival claimant has appeared and that the overseer wishes to speak with him and take his part in the dispute."
"And the meetings?"
"Ebana instructed his friend to tell both Turi and Mose to meet him on his way home, as his days are full of tasks at the moment. They are to meet at that old shrine behind the grain magazines of Ptah. You remember the place."
"Yes. It hasn't been used since the days of Amunhotep the Magnificent's grandfather, and it was old then. It's still standing?"
Bener nodded. "Each man thinks the overseer is meeting him to get an account of his case to present to the vizier's judges. Kysen and Ebana will be waiting instead, and they want you to be there to question the Nubians."
"I see," Meren said. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "How will Kysen leave the house undetected?"
Bener was grinning again. "I've offered him the use of my disguise."
It was Meren's turn to smile. He could imagine Kysen's disgust at having to dress like a woman, much less an aged laundress.
"Father," Bener said. "Cousin Ebana says you'll be able to discover the guilty one once you confront him, but I don't see how he can be so confident."
Meren gazed over his daughter's head at nothing, his thoughts traveling years into the past. "I'd forgotten how much my cousin and I think alike."
"But how will you discover the criminal?" Bener repeated.
"The less you know, the better." Meren remembered to be irate with his daughter. "And you're never to come here again. Stay home, where you belong. No following Kysen to the shrine this evening."
"Fear not, Father. Kysen and I made a bargain. He let me come to you, and I promised not to go to the shrine."
"Good," Meren snapped.
Othrys clapped his hands together. "Excellent. I'll be rid of you soon, and all will be well."
Meren glared a warning at the pirate, who caught his look and changed the subject.
"Now, lady, before you set off on your long journey across the city, allow me to give you a morning meal. Food, drink, and time with you will improve your father's foul humor."
One of the hardest things Meren had ever done was allow his daughter to shuffle out of Othrys's house alone with that basket of laundry. He worried about her the rest of the day. Even struggling with the mystery of Nefertiti's death proved but a temporary distraction. So far, he'd managed to knock a few chips from the stone barrier that encased his memories of that time and protected him from the pain they evoked. Keeping out of sight in his chamber until dusk, Meren took out the papyrus upon which he was writing his recollections of Horizon of the Aten.
Nefertiti had taken ill about a week before she died and had gradually grown worse, as had her younger children a few years earlier. Everyone had taken her symptoms for those of a plague that appeared periodically in Egypt, usually from the vassal lands of the Asiatics or from Nubia. Ten days of illness, gradual worsening, then death.
Now that he knew the signs of poisoning by the tekau plant from his physician, he could see that the queen had exhibited them shortly before he'd arrived at the palace with foreign correspondence Ay wanted her to see. Upon entering the small audience hall where Nefertiti usually received him, he'd been told that the queen had taken ill with a fever. Later she had received him despite her suffering; the ague had made her skin hot to the touch, red, and dry. So great had the fever been that she'd become disoriented during the interview.
Upon reflection all these years later, Meren realized that it had been that first attack of fever that had misled the physicians and everyone else. A virulent fever was the first sign of the plague. The queen's disorientation, her eventual delusions and blurred vision, had been attributed to the fever, as had that rapid and loud voice of the heart. Although the physicians had noted that the queen had not broken out in red marks-another sign of the plague-before she died, the significance of this had been lost in the shock of her death and the grief that had followed.
Indeed, even in the intrigue-ridden imperial court, where poison was always an unspoken menace, no suspicions had been voiced. The queen's illness had extended over a long period of time. Meren, and certainly everyone else at court, was accustomed to suspecting poison when a death was sudden and the cause unknown.
In the days that followed Nefertiti's first attack of fever, Meren had seldom left the queen's apartments except to go to Ay with reports of his daughter's health. As she worsened, he sent for his mentor, and after that, Ay rarely left her. Meren remained as well, but he kept himself hidden when pharaoh appeared to grieve over his wife and exhort her to rally. In the end, not even pharaoh's pleading helped. Nefertiti suffered fits in which her body contorted violently. Then she became senseless, and on the tenth day after her illness, she died.
Meren knew who had put the tekau poison in the queen's drink and food-her favorite cook, at the instigation of her steward. But the steward had been an obsequious place seeker and a coward. He would never have acted alone. If only he could remember more, especially of the daily routine at the palace. Then he might find some sign of the queen's killer.
Until he could recall more, he would continue to review the lists of those who had been Nefertiti's enemies. The more he explored the events surrounding the queen's death, the longer the list of enemies grew. Of these, the greatest had been the Hittite emissary to the royal court, Yazilikaya. In the last years of Akhenaten's reign the Hittite had found his attempts to allay pharaoh's suspicions and keep him inactive against his king's maneuvers thwarted by the queen.
And at the last, when the kingdom and Akhenaten had both deteriorated almost beyond recall, pharaoh turned to Nefertiti for help in a way that had shocked all of Egypt. As with many events deemed great transgressions against the right order of things, the whole kingdom now ignored them. It was as if these events had never happened. Akhenaten's actions during the last few years of his reign were never mentioned. Even Tutankhamun dared not speak of what his brother had done. And, unwilling though Nefertiti had been, her acceptance of Akhenaten's plans had plunged her into the swirling void of chaos that pharaoh created.
All public record of it had been expunged; such a thing had never been done, at least, not within the memory of anyone living. It was unnatural. There weren't words for it, and the gods had rebelled against it. Perhaps their displeasure at the transgression had been the real cause of Nefertiti's death, and Akhenaten's.
Meren's rush pen faltered as he tried to write the next line. The habit of secrecy was too great. He couldn't yet bring himself to write of Akhenaten's last offense. Laying down the pen, he folded the papyri and stuck them beneath his tunic so that they were held in place by his belt. He couldn't leave the record in Othrys's house. His only alternative was to carry it with him, and it was time to meet Kysen and Ebana.
Othrys and several of his men accompanied Meren as far as the magazines of Ptah. The pirate vowed that Meren would be less noticeable walking in their midst than he would be alone. In late afternoon, in the hour or two before darkness, the streets of Memphis teemed with pedestrians, subjects of pharaoh from every station in life returning home from a day's labor.
Temples emptied of priests, students, artisans, and supplicants. Government offices disgorged their workers-scribes of accounts, tithes, granaries, storehouses, and treasures. Port officials went home, as did maids, women market vendors, gold-workers, overseers of cattle, outline draftsmen, carpenters, and fishermen. Meren kept his head down and made way for the chariots of grand noblemen returning from court or from the temple of Ptah. Like Othrys and other more ordinary citizens, he stumbled over boy students who hurtled through the crowds with their scribes kits dangling from grubby fingers.
The crowds thinned as they made their way to the rear of the enormous grain magazines of the temple of Ptah. The high, arched vaults would overflow with grain after next harvest. When they reached the rear of the buildings, only a few stragglers passed them. Othrys stopped at the corner of the last magazine and peered around the corner. Meren came to stand beside his host and looked into the uneven and neglected lane that came to a dead end at the shrine. A dog trotted out from between two buildings, but it saw them and retreated. Nothing else moved.
Othrys backed away from the corner and turned to Meren. "I leave you here. If you don't come back to my house, I'm not going to look for you."
"Your concern for me is touching," Meren said.
"By the earth mother, I've done more than any of your precious Egyptian friends."
Meren smiled and bowed slightly. "Forgive my foul temper.It comes from being forced to wear this cursed wig. It itches worse than these leggings."
"But no one would recognize you in it," Othrys replied.
"You have my gratitude and my friendship," Meren said. He offered his hand, and they exchanged a warrior's grip. "If I live, you will receive proof of my thankfulness."
"Farewell, Egyptian. I'll go home and pronounce curses on those who plot your destruction. May fate be with you."
In moments, Meren was alone. The carnelian orb of Ra was sinking behind the city's tall buildings when Meren stepped into the lane. Elongated shadows cut across his path, and the air seemed to turn gold with the sun's passage. He could smell water from the submerged fields of Inundation, along with the odor of cooking fires. Ahead of him stood the shrine. It had been built as a part of a temple complex hundreds of years ago, when the city was much smaller. Memphis had encroached upon its perimeter walls, and finally the little temple had been abandoned, its buildings quarried for their stone.
All that remained was this little square structure, a processional kiosk that everyone referred to as a shrine. Its columns were square, and it had a central staircase leading up to a threshold from which the doors and shutters had vanished long ago. The doorway was flanked by two tall windows, and the whole of the outer surface was carved. Meren had visited the place as a youth and remembered seeing raised reliefs of a pharaoh, Sesostris, presenting offerings to a god.
Meren reached the shrine. Avoiding the stairs, he went to one of the windows and surveyed the interior. Devoid of furnishings, it was littered with trash blown from the lane- scraps of a papyrus sandal, dead palm leaves, a few feathers, and sand. Meren walked around to the back. A storehouse had been built so close that he had to enter the space between the two buildings sideways. He hadn't been there long when four men appeared in the lane. As they approached the shrine and stepped out of a long shadow, Meren breathed more easily. Abu and Reia walked ahead of his son and Ebana. All of them were armed. Slipping from his hiding place, Meren waited beside the shrine. Abu saw him first and saluted. At his movement, Kysen grinned, called to Meren, and ran to him.
"Father!" Kysen halted abruptly and studied his father.
"I'm well, Ky." Meren dragged his son into his arms for a brief, rough embrace and released him,
"What happened?" Kysen said as the others drew near. He held out a dagger, which Meren took and slid beneath his belt. "How could pharaoh believe you would-"
Meren held up his hand. "Later." He grasped Ebana's arm. "Cousin."
There was no need for words. One glance at those features that were so like his own wiped away years, and they were back at his father's estate in the country, daring each other to spend the night in the ghost-infested desert. They smiled at each other, and for once bitterness and accusations of betrayal failed to divide them.
Ebana put his fists on his hips and grinned at Meren. "If you keep getting yourself into such peril, I'll have to give up being a priest of Amun and become your bodyguard."
"I've missed you," Meren said.
Ebana's smile faded. "Our estrangement wasn't my fault."
"Ebana, don't."
"I know. This isn't the time. With your permission, cousin. Your men should find cover in the darkness of the shrine, as should we."
The kiosk had a central chamber flanked by a smaller room on each side, formed by rectangular pillars. It was gloomy in the larger room in spite of the gaping doorway, and dark in the smaller rooms except near the windows. Abu and Reia melted into the shadows of the two western pillars inside a flanking chamber while Meren and Kysen took a pillar on the east and Ebana the remaining one.
They'd just taken their places when an obsidian figure walked into view from the direction of the magazines. It was Mose. Long strides brought him to the foot of the stairs. As he mounted them, Turi hurried around the corner of the storehouse and to the front of the shrine. The two guards stared at each other in the fading light, then exchanged queries in their native language. In confusion they continued their exchange as they ascended the staircase and entered the shrine.
Meren waited until they were well inside before moving. In silence he slipped around the pillar and put himself between the two men and the doorway.
"Greetings," he said, causing the Nubians to whirl around and reach for their daggers.
As they moved, Kysen, Ebana, and the rest appeared, their weapons drawn. The Nubians froze in the act of drawing their blades.
"Hands away from your daggers," Meren commanded.
Abu relieved them of their weapons as Kysen joined Meren.
Ebana took a position at the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, and watched the lane. "Whatever you're going to do, do it quickly, cousin."
"Aye, Father," Kysen said. "We can't stay long. And we can't drag them through the streets. I told Ebana we should have abducted them from their homes and secreted them somewhere."
Meren shook his head. "There's no need. A few words with these two should suffice to prove me innocent."
"A few words?" Kysen gave him a startled look.
Walking over to the silent Nubians, Meren looked up at them, for they were almost a foot taller than he. "Repeat these words. Majesty, life, health, prosperity."
Turi and Mose exchanged blank looks. Then Turi spoke.
"Majesty, life, health, prosperity."
Kysen gave Meren an inquiring look. "This makes no sense."
"It would if your heart wasn't weighted down with ignorance from being of common blood," Ebana said from his post by the doorway.
Kysen flashed a disgusted look at Ebana but said nothing.
Meren signaled to Reia. "Take him out and release him."
Reia escorted Turi from the shrine, and Meren faced the remaining Nubian.
"Royal bodyguards are like slaves at court, like furniture. Are they not, Mose?"
The Nubian said nothing. His features seemed as expressionless as those of a lizard.
"And furniture does not make noise," Meren continued. "Certainly a noisy guard is a worthless one. And chatter isn't the way of a Nubian warrior. Is it, Mose?"
Kysen drew nearer and breathed his words. "By the wrath of Montu, Father."
Meren nodded to his son, then whipped out his dagger without warning and touched the point to the ebony skin over Mose's throat.
"Say the words, or by the gods I'll make you scream them."
All he got in response was the same impassive regard he'd come to expect from any Nubian royal guard.
Drawing close to the man, Meren spoke softly. "Remember the time I captured the leader of the miserable Asiatics who murdered everyone at the fortress called Might of Horus? Remember how long it took him to die out in the desert?" Meren withdrew his dagger and tapped his fingers on the blade. "It's so easy to attract the creatures of the desert to a bleeding body-snakes, scorpions, ants… vultures."
Mose stared into his eyes and shook his head.
Meren smiled at him. "You have family, don't you, Mose?"
This time Mose blinked. Meren darted at him, placing the blade at his throat again. "Speak. In the voice you used in the tent that night, not with your usual accent."
"Too late," Ebana said.
Meren withdrew the dagger and joined his cousin in looking out the doorway. Soldiers with scimitars and shields approached down the lane. Dozens of bows pointed at the shrine from the corners of the grain magazines. Above all the others, Meren recognized the black head of Karoya.
"Curse it, how did Horemheb know? Abu, Kysen, bring the Nubian."
Meren stepped into the half-light at the top of the stairs. The approaching soldiers stopped. Motionless, Meren waited without surprise as the troops parted, revealing pharaoh. He was almost jolted from his composure when he saw who was behind pharaoh. Bener stood beside a guard, who was holding her arm. Once again she was dressed as an aged laundress.
Horemheb appeared at pharaoh's side. "Take them."
"No!" Tutankhamun said. Horemheb whispered to the king, but Tutankhamun shook his head and silenced the general with a slice of his hand.
The king walked toward the shrine, and Meren descended the stairs. They met in the empty space between the troops and the shrine.
"Golden one, you shouldn't have come."
Tutankhamun's smile was bitter. "I had to. I have to know the truth. Why did you do it? Have you been a traitor all this time?"
"No, majesty. I am as I always was, thy servant. I would give my life-"
"Don't. I'll hear no protests of loyalty. I'll commit you to trial in secret to save your family the disgrace, but I'll hear no protests of loyalty from you."
"Then will thy majesty hear proof of his servant's innocence?"
"What can you say that will excuse what you did?"
"I can say nothing, but there is one whose words will end this deceit."
Horemheb marched to them. "Forgive me, majesty, but it's growing dark."
Tutankhamun waved the general into silence. "I will listen."
Meren summoned Kysen, and Mose was brought out of the shrine between him and Abu. Ebana followed. Tutankhamun frowned as he recognized his guard, and he turned to Meren.
"Command Mose to speak the words I instructed him to speak before you came, majesty."
"What confusion is this?" Horemheb asked.
Raising his hand, pharaoh continued to stare at Meren without responding. Meren met the king's gaze directly. He hoped that some small remnant of faith in him still existed within this youth for whom he felt both the love of a father and the reverence of a subject. Tutankhamun still hesitated.
"Majesty," Meren whispered. "You hold my life. I beg you, don't crush it beneath your sandal."
For the briefest moment the boy closed his eyes, and his face contorted with pain. The spasm passed, and the king met his gaze once more.
"Mose, speak."
Mose's lips pressed together. At the silence, Tutankhamun's eyes widened. Meren gave the Nubian a nasty smile.
"Pharaoh is quite unaccustomed to disobedience, Mose."
Horemheb suddenly stalked over to the guard and said, "Yes. I suggest you do as the divine one commanded before I make you."
When the Nubian remained silent, Meren sighed and said, "I see I must remind you of our conversation in the shrine, Mose. The desert, your family? Speak."
His gaze darting from Horemheb to Meren, Mose opened his mouth. Ebana's dagger prodded him in the ribs from behind, and the words came out at last.
"Majesty, life, health, prosperity."
At first there was silence. Then the king took several steps that brought him closer to Mose, and Meren joined him.
"Say it again-no-say this. Say, 'Majesty, where are you?' "
As if the words were dragged from him like pyramid blocks on a sledge, Mose complied. "Majesty, where are you?"
Slowly the king turned to face Meren, his face pale. "Like you. His voice sounds like yours. There isn't even an accent."
"Yes, majesty. And now we must ask who bribed him to pretend to be me and feign that attack on you, and why. I think you'll find, Horemheb, that Mose has suddenly acquired much wealth."
"Mose," the king said. "I command you to respond."
But Mose wasn't attending to pharaoh. As Meren watched the Nubian, alarm writhed like a cold snake in his belly, for Mose's gaze was directed over the pharaoh's head, over the heads of the men surrounding them, at the rooftops. When the guard's eyes widened in terror, Meren moved. At the same time, Mose lunged at them. His hands fastened on the king, and the Nubian dragged the boy against his chest like a shield. Instantly Meren tore the king from Mose's grip and felt a stinging jolt in his side. Ignoring the pain, he twisted and plunged to the ground with the king beneath him.
Above him all was confusion and noise.
Horemheb shouted, "Not the one on the roof, the Nubian! Get the Nubian Mose!"
Dust flew into Meren's face as men ran by. He heard arrows whistling and blades clashing, but he was more concerned with lifting himself so that he could assess the danger to the king, who was swearing and spitting dirt underneath him.
Planting his hands on the ground beside pharaoh's head, Meren lifted his upper body. Pain arced through him, and his left arm collapsed. The chaos above him descended and wrought havoc with his senses. He seemed to be living just outside his body.
With vague surprise he looked on as Horemheb pulled him off the king and laid him on his back. Tutankhamun rolled over, crouched beside him. Pharaoh's mouth moved, but the sound of his words seemed delayed. Meren was even more astonished when the king bent and gripped something sticking out of the ground close to Meren.
When Tutankhamun broke the end of an arrow, the agony that resulted told Meren that the missile was buried in his side, not the ground. Meren searched for the wound and clamped his hand over the point of entry. Horemheb was still beside him while the king propped Meren's head on one leg.
"What are you doing here?" Meren snapped at the general. "Find the bowman."
"Every man I have is chasing him and Mose, including your son and your cousin and your charioteers. Don't tell me how to hunt criminals, Meren. I found you, didn't I?"
"You let Mose get away?"
"Damn you, Meren. The men closest to the king were trying to protect him from the bowman, and the ones farther away didn't know Mose was a criminal."
"My apologies, old friend," Meren said.
Grimacing, he looked around at the wall of men surrounding pharaoh, then up at the king. Tutankhamun was regarding him with a mixture of anxiety and relief.
"It wasn't necessary to prove your innocence in so dramatic a manner," the king said. He placed his hand over Meren's bloody one. "I already believed you."
Meren smiled, but his lips contorted with pain. "My heart exults in thy majesty's safekeeping."
Pharaoh said something in reply, but to Meren the king seemed to recede into the distance. He blinked, which was a mistake, because he found he couldn't lift his eyelids. The noise and confusion returned, grew louder, and then faded into a whirlpool of blackness.