Nakht lay on his back in the middle of his private reception room. His eyes were closed, his face contorted in an impossible smile. Fresh blood was everywhere. It was smeared across the white-plastered floor beneath him. It stained his hands and his bare torso and his kilt. A reddish trickle ran from his mouth to the hair at the nape of his neck. A second, wider stream had flowed from the dagger imbedded in his breast and down his ribcage to a streaked puddle on the floor. His death could not have been easy, but with luck and the quick intervention of the gods, his ka, his eternal double, had slipped from his body soon after the attack.
Bak stood on the threshold, barely aware of the armed guard at his shoulder or the murmurs of disbelief and curiosity issuing from the lips of the dozen or so people clustered in the torchlit courtyard behind him. He stared with dismay at the scene. All he could think of was Nakht’s reference to offenses against the gods and a burden he alone must shoulder. Had he been slain to keep secret the knowledge he had refused to share? If he, Bak, had been less concerned about himself, if he had urged the commandant to speak, would he still live and breathe?
The watch officer, Lieutenant Mery, the man who stood at the head of the fortress guard, knelt beside the bloodied form. His slim, boyish torso glistened in the light of a flaming torch mounted in a wall bracket next to the door. His face, as perfectly molded as a statue of royalty, was drawn and pale, accenting a small livid scar at the corner of his mouth.
An overturned chair lay behind Nakht’s body. On a narrow cedar table standing beside it, a pair of pottery oil lamps burned with a dull glow. Several chests, low tables, and stools, all simply but beautifully crafted, were scattered around the room. A lean, hard-faced spearman was posted before a second open door. Through the portal, Bak could see part of the long mudbrick stairway that climbed the inner side of the fortress wall from the ground floor to the battlements, dark and enclosed to roof level, open to the air from the roof to the walkway atop the wall. A stairway for soldiers to use in time of battle, unlike a more formal stone stairwell in another part of the building, which rose to the private apartments on the second floor and opened onto the courtyard.
A fleeting whimper, like the mewling of a newborn kitten, drew him into the room. Standing next to the wall to his right, beside a cedar chest inlaid with ebony, was a shapely young woman of no more than twenty years. Her face, her hands, her ankle-length white sheath were smeared with blood. Her eyes, pools of amber in a rigid, stark white face, were locked on the dead man. Her red-brown hair was pulled back and braided, the thick plait hanging to her waist.
Hovering by her side, his cheeks wet with tears, was a stocky man of middle years wearing a belted white knee-length tunic. His brown braid was as thick and long as the woman’s. He was the commandant’s personal servant, Bak knew, a man named Lupaki, whom Nakht had brought with him from the land of Hatti. If the woman’s hair and pale eyes told true, she too must have come from that distant place. Bak wondered who she was. A servant, most likely, or perhaps Nakht’s concubine.
He recalled the words of Maiherperi, who had advised him at length before sending him to Buhen with the Medjays. When a man is slain in his home, the commander had said, look first to the members of his household; learn which had reason to hate him and which had the most to gain from his death and you’ll very likely learn the name of the guilty man-or woman. If the burden Nakht had mentioned concerned domestic matters, Bak thought, that might well explain his reluctance to speak.
He crossed to the body, relieved this death would be so easily resolved. Kneeling beside Mery, he placed his fingertips on Nakht’s neck to search for a pulse of life. As he expected, he found nothing but the chill sweat of the dead man’s last fatal struggle.
“Who did this, Lieutenant? The woman?”
“No,” Mery said. “No!” His dark eyes were clouded with unhappiness and something else. Uncertainty? “I saw him in her arms, Bak. I saw the pain they shared at the end. She couldn’t have done this.”
“You were here when he died?”
“I came as soon as I heard her scream. Too late to see the one who stabbed him, but he still lived-barely.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
Mery glanced toward the woman and his mouth tightened. “Her husband is dead. Must she stand there and listen? Must she be forced to relive those moments while I describe them?”
“She was his wife?” Bak asked, surprised.
Mery nodded. “Azzia, she is called.”
“She speaks our tongue?”
A humorless smile formed on Mery’s lips. “Better than you and me.”
Bak eyed the lifeless commandant, who had been a healthy, vigorous man of at least fifty years. More than twice the age of the foreign woman. Not unusual for a man to desire a young wife, but a choice which often led to domestic troubles. Yet he saw no reason to keep her here.
He stood up and walked to her. “You may go to your chamber, mistress. I’ll speak with you later.”
She moved not a single muscle and her eyes never left the face of the inert form on the floor.
“You may go,” he repeated, making it an order this time.
“The shock of my master’s death has stolen her reason,” Lupaki said, his voice husky with emotion.
He placed a brawny arm around her waist, clasped one of her blood-stained hands, and led her like an un-resisting child through the door and into the courtyard. Exclamations of shock and dismay filtered through the open portal.
Bak ordered the guard posted there to stay with her. Closing the door, he turned to Mery. “Tell me what happened.”
Mery stood up, his glance accusing. “Must you treat her as a prisoner in her own home?”
“For the love of Amon, Lieutenant! She’s covered with his blood. What do you expect me to do?”
Mery glared at him, but his defiance quickly melted. “You’re right, of course, but I can explain her appearance.”
Pulling a stool away from the wall, Bak placed it a few paces from the body and motioned Mery onto it. He chose his words carefully lest he offend this officer who was his superior in rank if not in authority under the laws he had been sent to uphold.
“I see you admire her,” he said, “but you must do nothing to protect her. If I’m to find the one who committed this terrible deed, I must be led along a straight and true path.”
With an unhappy nod, Mery sank onto the stool and clasped his hands between his bare knees. Bak walked around the body and knelt on its opposite side so he could watch the officer’s face while he talked.
“I was making my rounds,” Mery said. “After checking the sentries on the battlements, I realized I’d forgotten the list of men assigned to the gates. I came here to get it. I found the audience hall filled with the rabble your Medjays had brought and your scribe Hori placing their names on a scroll. Twenty or more other men, clerks and soldiers, were standing around the chamber, watching the activity. Lupaki and Azzia’s female servants were among them.”
Not surprised but irritated nonetheless, Bak said, “In other words, instead of being almost empty as it would normally have been at this time of night, the building was filled with curiosity seekers as well as my own men and their prisoners.”
Mery hurried on, as if anxious to get his tale over and done with. “As I crossed the audience hall, I heard a scream. I ran up the stairs. From the courtyard, I saw light flowing through the open door of this room. I looked inside.” His voice thickened. “The commandant was on the floor and mistress Azzia beside him, holding him in her arms. His blood was flowing from the wound as water through an open irrigation channel. I knew no man could save him. I motioned Lupaki and all those who’d followed to stay back and I stood there, listening. I heard Nakht say, ‘Don’t cry, my beloved.’ And she said, ‘You can’t go away; you can’t leave me.’ He replied, ‘I love you more than life, my beautiful bird.’”
Mery stared at his hands. “She said, ‘How will I live without you? You’re my heart.’ Nakht raised his hand from his breast, his bloody hand, and laid it on her face. ‘I was a man when you were a babe,’ he said. ‘You’ve always known I’d die before you.’ She covered her mouth to soften a moan and said, ‘But not like this.’ Nakht drew her face to his and their mouths met in a kiss. When she raised her head, she asked, ‘Who did this to you? Why?’ He shuddered as if in terrible agony and his body went limp.” Mery paused, swallowed, and his eyes found Bak’s. “She refused to leave him until I summoned Lupaki.”
Bak was touched in spite of his better judgment. “Did she know you were standing close by when she asked who slew him?”
“I think not. She was too intent on him to see me or anyone else.”
Maybe, Bak thought, and maybe not. Yet Mery’s tale could not be easily dismissed. Maiherperi had said: if you have the smallest reason to suspect the members of the slain man’s household are without guilt, you must cast your net wider. With a resigned sigh, he rose and walked around the room, studying the chests and stools and tables that appeared not to have been disturbed, the overturned chair, the upright table with the burning lamps, the position of Nakht’s body.
“When you entered, was the table standing as it is now?” he asked. “Were the lamps alight and placed on it?”
“Everything was just as you see it.”
“He was probably seated beside the table, and with two lamps so near…” Bak’s eyes darted toward Mery. “He must’ve been reading, but I see no scroll.”
“The one who slew him could’ve taken it. Does that not prove mistress Azzia innocent? She left this room empty-handed.”
Unless it was a fragment, Bak thought, a piece so small she could hide it in the bosom of her dress. He examined the chair, which was free of blood, and ran his fingers over the smooth, clean surfaces of the narrow table. “If there was a struggle, it was short-lived. Otherwise, this would’ve fallen over, too.”
“Nakht was not a man to give up without resisting. If he’d expected the attack, he’d have done all he could to protect himself.”
“Therefore he was caught off guard. The blow was true to its mark, giving him no more chance than a newborn lamb facing a jackal.”
Bak’s glance fell to the dagger handle, slightly longer than the breadth of a hand and carved from ebony. Below the smoky gray rock crystal pommel, it was inlaid with three narrow bands of gold. An elegant weapon, the type carried by high-ranking officers and the nobility.
“Do you recognize this?” he asked.
“I do, as you would if you’d been here longer.” Mery rose to stand over the body. “It was one of Nakht’s most treasured possessions. He brought the blade from the land of Hatti, and our commander-in-chief, Menkheperre Thutmose himself, had the handle made for him.” He shuddered. “For a man to use this dagger to take his life was an abomination.”
Reluctant to do what he knew he must, Bak sucked in his breath, gripped the handle, and jerked the weapon out of the lifeless breast. The blade, gory with blood, made the beer churn in his stomach. Chiding himself for the weakness, he strode to the table and held the dagger close to a lamp.
The blade was twice as long as the handle and tapered to a deadly point. It was made of a dull silvery gray metal so rare he had seen it only once or twice before. Surprised, excited, he swung around to Mery. “This is iron!”
Mery nodded. “A metal as common in Hatti, Nakht told me, as is gold in our own desert wadis.”
Bak gazed at the weapon with a covetous eye. “They say it’s very strong and a man who owns such a blade holds the power of the gods in his hands. I wonder if…” He shook his head. “No! If the one who slew Nakht meant to steal this dagger, he’d have pulled it out of his breast and carried it away. His life wasn’t taken for this.”
More likely, he thought, it was used simply because it was here, a convenient object for a wife to lay her hands on during a heated argument. Nevertheless, he had to look elsewhere, too, if for no other reason than to satisfy himself that he had done all he should. Laying the dagger on the table, he eyed the door that opened to the dark stairway. Obviously, the woman had smeared much of the blood, but if someone else had taken Nakht’s life, he might have been spattered and left some sign farther afield.
At Bak’s command, a spearman brought another torch and he entered the rough-plastered, rather musty stairwell, leaving Mery and the guard behind. He wanted no one to disturb any telltale signs. He worked his way downward a step at a time to the ground floor, unable to find any fresh smudges or spots of blood. The door at the bottom was closed but not barred. He made his way upward with equal care, again finding nothing, to an open trapdoor at roof level. Had the door been left open to admit the cooler night air to the rooms below? Or to admit a man Nakht had summoned?
He stepped onto the flat, empty rooftop and took a deep breath of the clean chill air. Wondering if he should look further, he gazed at the open flight of stairs that continued up the wall to the battlements. What exactly had Nakht said? “If you’d offended the gods to the extent some men have…” Men. He had made no mention of a woman. The thought spurred Bak on, but the stairs above were as free of stains as those below.
After identifying himself to the sentry at the top, he climbed onto the nearest tower, which rose from the northwest corner of the inner city, the administrative sector of Buhen. From there, he could see in the waning moonlight much of the outer city, a huge rectangular area enclosed by walls as high and strong as those around the citadel. The streets were crooked, the blocks irregular in shape, the buildings thrown together in random form. Within these cramped structures were the workshops and homes of craftsmen and traders. On the outskirts lay the animal enclosures, encampments for transient soldiers, and a necropolis of the ancients. No light was visible, no human stirred. Only the creatures of the night disrupted the silence: a chorus of dogs, a howling cat, the soft tweet of birds nesting in the wall somewhere below where Bak stood.
He puzzled over Nakht’s words. Had he used the word “men” as a general term, encompassing both sexes, or had he been more specific? With no ready answer, Bak watched the sentries patrolling the battlements. Besides the man who paced the sector where he stood, he could see the more distant figures of several others. They stopped at times to look over the wall and they lingered to chat when their paths happened to meet. He felt certain a cautious man could slip from one tower to the next and onto or off the stairway without their noticing.
He looked over the breastwork at the inner city, a series of grayish rectangles outlined by straight black streets and lanes infrequently traveled in the dead of night. His eyes settled on the shadowy roof of the commandant’s residence, the largest house in Buhen. It nestled in a corner with two of its walls butting against the fortress wall, its facade opening to the street. Its fourth side hugged a narrow lane-bridged by a wide board, he noticed-which separated the residence from the scribal office building and the main storehouse, easily recognized by the long parallel ridges atop its barrel-vaulted ceiling. Beyond lay the treasury and the walled mansion of the lord Horus of Buhen. The scribal offices interested Bak the most. They were empty at night, as were most of the structures in the sector, and the building had a stairway to the roof. It would take but a few moments to fly from there to the stairs descending to Nakht’s reception room.
He studied the dozen or more dark smudges visible in the torchlit courtyard, men who had been watching the Medjays when the woman screamed, and considered another, equally likely possibility. With so many people milling around the ground floor, a man intent on murder could easily have slipped into the dark, enclosed stairwell and later, after slaying the commandant, rejoined the crowd without being missed.
Three ways of reaching Nakht with small chance of being seen by members of the household. All possible but risky. Foolhardy, even.
No, the foreign woman Azzia must have slain her husband. Yet doubt nagged Bak like a hungry mosquito. He dreaded talking to her, dreaded having to accuse her of taking her husband’s life. But if she should prove her innocence, he dreaded more the idea of having to search further. How could he, a man whose sole experience was with horses, chariots, and battle tactics, find the one guilty man in a city of nearly five hundred?
Bak crossed the courtyard with heavy feet. He had dispatched Nakht’s body to the house of death and examined the slain man’s personal rooms, where he found nothing of interest. He had questioned the onlookers, who all denied having seen anyone take the stairway to the second floor, and had sent them away. And he had ordered Imsiba to go with Mery to question the men patrolling the battlements as to who and what they had seen through their night’s vigil.
The moon had sunk behind the fortress wall, the torches had burned low, and the stars above sparkled in an inky void. The dark forms of potted flowers and trees, which gave the courtyard the appearance of a miniature garden, scented the air with perfume. As he approached the only lighted doorway, he nodded to the Medjay he had posted there to guard the woman Azzia.
She sat on a low three-legged stool, her back straight, her hands clasped in her lap, her head held high. No bloodstains remained on her hands or her pale, oval face, and she wore a clean unadorned linen sheath. She must have heard the patter of his sandals, for her eyes were on the door when he entered.
“Have you come to accuse me of murder?” Her voice, which held no trace of an accent, was quiet and composed, with barely a hint of tension.
He stopped short on the threshold, caught by surprise. “Did you take your husband’s life?”
The servant Lupaki, standing by her side, laid a protective hand on her shoulder. Seated on the floor next to a large pottery basin, a dusky, nearly naked girl of no more than ten years raised her hand to her mouth to smother a sob. Beside the child, a twig-thin, wrinkled old woman glared at Bak over an untidy pile of bloodstained linen she clutched in her arms.
“No.” Azzia looked at him, her gaze steady. “Lieutenant Mery has said you believe I did.”
Bak silently cursed the watch officer for saying more than he should. The female servants must have thought his scowl meant for them, for they scurried into the next room, Azzia’s bedchamber.
“I’ve found nothing to convince me otherwise,” Bak said.
“And I was there.” It came out as a whisper, and for an instant she seemed close to breaking, but she stiffened her spine and tried to smile.
That smile, so fragile and filled with pain, pierced Bak through and through. He looked away, pretending to examine the room. It was half the size of Nakht’s reception room and furnished much the same. Rush mats covered the floor. The lower walls were painted with unsophisticated but delicate scenes of the animals of the desert.
“I did not take his life, that I swear. He was my…” She paused and her thoughts turned inward. Then she shuddered as if to free herself of memories and looked directly at Bak. “Mery said that though you believe I’m guilty, you looked beyond my husband’s room for signs of another person.”
“That’s right.” Bak’s tone was brisk, covering his annoyance that he had allowed her to move him. He grabbed a stool from its place near the door, set it in front of her, and sat down. “Tell me what happened this evening.”
Lupaki slipped forward, dropped to his knees before Bak, raised his hands in supplication. “Don’t ask this of her, sir. You must give her time to compose herself.”
“Be silent, Lupaki,” Azzia said firmly. “It must be now.”
“Mistress…”
“Would you have me punished for the death of my husband? Would you allow the one who slew him to go free?”
Bak was taken aback by the blunt questions and by the depth of anger her voice betrayed. The anger of innocence, he wondered, or of guilt?
Lupaki uttered a strangled denial and hauled himself to his feet, his face flushed with shame.
Briefly, Azzia’s gaze dropped to her hands, clasped so tightly together her fingers were nearly bloodless. “We took our evening meal in the courtyard where we could enjoy the breeze. While we ate, we talked about our day, as we always do.” She gave an odd little laugh, or was it a cry? “As we always did.”
“What exactly did you talk about?” Bak asked, hurrying her on before she had a chance to think too deeply.
“I told him about the market, the gossip I’d heard from the other women. Nothing important. He told me he’d met with several officers, Mery, Nebwa, Paser, and others, no doubt to discuss the attacks on the caravans bringing ore from the mines, the need to send out troops to hunt down the raiding tribesmen. He said he told them of suggestions you’d made based on tactics you learned with the regiment of Amon.”
Bak made no comment, but he was surprised the commandant would share so much of his official day with his wife.
“He was pleased Commander Maiherperi had sent you and the Medjays.” A fleeting smile touched her lips. “He felt sure your presence here would put an end to much of the wild carousing and petty crime. And then…” She paused, her voice trembled. “Then he looked troubled and said…he said, ‘But they can do nothing to help me now. I must personally deal with…’”
Bak leaned toward her, his pulses quickening. “Go on.”
“He never finished the thought. I urged him to explain, but he said he’d do so later, after the problem was resolved.” She closed her eyes tight, took a deep, ragged breath.
Bak did not know what to think. Her grief appeared genuine, but she could as easily be playing on his sympathy to learn if Nakht had confided in him.
She hurried on. “He left me soon after and went to his bedchamber. I helped the servants take the remains of our meal to the kitchen and spoke with them while they cleaned the bowls. When I returned, my husband was waiting for me in this room. He said he had something he must do and suggested I retire. He said…” Her voice grew tight. “He said he would come to me later.”
With the wild panicked look of a snared fawn, she sprang to her feet and rushed out the door. Bak hurried after her, but stopped short when he saw her standing, head bowed, her back to him, in the center of the courtyard. The Medjay guard, already on his feet, threw him an uncertain look. Bak signaled him to remain where he was and walked toward her. In the dim light, the clinging white sheath accented every graceful curve of her lovely body. Bak, who had known many women in his twenty-three years, was drawn to her like a wasp to water.
Very well aware of his weakness for an attractive woman, he stopped a few paces away and forced himself to think of her not as a lovely young widow but as the one most likely to have slain her husband.
She raised her head and turned to look at him. “Nakht went to his reception room. His distress had worried me, and I couldn’t rest. I waited and waited-too long, I thought-so I dressed and went to him.” She paused, swallowed. “He lay bleeding on the floor. I tried to stop the flow. He said it was too late and asked me to raise his head and shoulders. I asked who had done this to him, but he spoke of personal matters. Again I asked who…” She closed her eyes, shook her head. “He never answered.”
She turned away and walked slowly toward the lighted door of her sitting room, where Lupaki waited. Bak watched the two of them go inside, his mind a jumble of contradictory thoughts. Is she bravely holding her sorrow at arm’s length, as she appears to be? he wondered. Or is her every word and action a lie?
“Is she telling the truth?”
The question, so closely matching his own, startled him. He swung around and spotted Imsiba emerging from the shadows of the landing atop the stairway that connected the private quarters to the audience hall. The sergeant, a dozen years older than Bak and half a head taller, walked as lithe and graceful as a leopard. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his muscles solid and powerful.
“I wish I knew,” Bak admitted. “Did you hear it all?”
“Merely the last few words.”
Bak cursed his bad luck. Imsiba’s uncanny ability to read another’s thoughts might have pulled his wits from the sodden marsh they seemed to have fallen into. “What did you learn from the sentries?”
“No one saw anyone on the battlements who should not have been there, and no one noticed anyone on the roof of this house.”
“None but officers and guards are allowed on the wall at night.” Bak gave the Medjay a sharp look. “I know Lieutenant Mery was there. Are you saying others were, too?”
“Three men,” Imsiba said. “Nebwa, the senior lieutenant in this garrison who commands the infantry, had to speak with the watch sergeant. As he was busy, Nebwa waited for some time. The second man was Paser, the lieutenant responsible for escorting the gold caravans. He climbed the stairs near the quay, walked briefly along the parapet, and returned to the ground.”
“What of the third man?” Bak asked.
Imsiba looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Harmose, an archer who shares the blood of my people and yours and speaks both tongues. He translated for the commandant, who valued his judgment, so I’ve been told, and treated him like an officer.”
“What was he doing up there?”
“He often walks the wall, looking at the ships moored at the quay, the river, and the desert sands where his mother was born. He did so tonight.”
“The commandant’s life was taken when the moon was at its highest point. Did the sentries notice any of the three-or Mery-near the stairway to this house at that time?”
Imsiba snorted. “They think of the moon as nothing more than a measure of the hours they must remain on watch. They know it passed overhead and they know those men were on the wall sometime during its passing. That’s as specific as they can be.”
Bak stared with a gloomy face at the door to Azzia’s sitting room. That Nakht had spoken during the afternoon to the three officers, and possibly to his translator as well, and they had all been atop the wall near the time of his death, meant almost nothing. He had no good reason to free her from suspicion. Common sense told him she was guilty, but doubt remained in his heart. Was it because her words and behavior had played on his sympathies? Or because her youth and beauty had warped his judgment?
What he needed, he decided, was an impartial observer, and he could think of none better than a man who could sense another’s thoughts.
“Come with me,” he said.
Imsiba raised an eyebrow, but followed in Bak’s shadow across the courtyard.
When they entered the lighted room, Azzia was standing in its center, talking rapidly in a tongue Bak did not understand, the tongue of her homeland, he assumed. Lupaki stood before his mistress, trying to speak but unable to stop her flow. Her voice and face were positive and determined, his negative and glum.
She glanced around, saw Imsiba, and stiffened. Her eyes swung toward Bak. “Are you now convinced only I could’ve taken my husband’s life?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Bak admitted.
Her laugh held no humor. “My husband said you were a man who spoke his thoughts.”
Bak could find no appropriate response.
“Are you as honest in deeds as words?” she asked.
“I try to be,” he said stiffly.
She studied him for some time. “You were sent here in disgrace, I know, and my husband was prepared to dislike you. After he met you, talked with you, he thought you a man he could depend upon and, more important, trust.” She glanced at Lupaki. “Since I have no better alternative, I must trust you, too.”
Lupaki shook his head vehemently and rattled off a few unintelligible words, but Azzia ignored him. “First, lest you hear it from another’s lips, I must tell you…” She hesitated, then took a deep breath as if to draw strength from the air. “When my husband spoke of the problem he must face, I urged him to share his burden. He refused, insisting it was his alone. I…I accused him of taking on all the problems of the world with no thought of those around him. And we quarreled.”
A wan smile failed to steal the haunted look from her eyes. “Later, when I found him struck down, he seemed to have forgotten our harsh words, but I doubt I’ll ever forget, nor forgive myself.”
She turned to a small ivory inlaid chest, which had not been there earlier, and hurried on before Bak could comment or even sort out his thoughts. “I found something in my bedchamber, something my husband must’ve left there before…before his life was taken.”
She raised the lid. Nesting among combs, perfume jars, cosmetic containers, and a bronze mirror were a roll of papyrus and a rectangular slab of metal. The scroll was bound with cord but its seal was broken. The rough slab was six fingers’ breadth by three, and half a finger’s breadth thick. Bak was sure it was gold, the flesh of the lord Re.
He stared, unable to speak. Unworked gold was the exclusive property of the royal house, of Maatkare Hatshepsut herself. In Buhen, where the precious ore was received from the mines and melted down to ingots before its shipment to the capital, where temptation was ever-present, no man, not even the commandant, had the right to possess it.