Authors: Pauline Gedge
“You came to the harem with great promise,” he said as he rapped for the guard to let him out. “You were beautiful and strong-willed and intelligent. In you I saw a chance for my King to be happy and I advanced your cause because of it. But you were also cunning and cold, and it saddened me to see how you tried to use my Master, whom I love and serve. I deal with the affairs of many women. I praise and punish, comfort and reprimand. Most of my charges are nothing but wayward children, but you were different. If you are found guilty but are indeed innocent, I will do whatever is necessary to discover the truth and have you reinstated in the King’s favour. I have that power. You may expect to have your belongings restored to you by sunset.” The guard had opened the door and was waiting. Amunnakht bowed, and the door thudded shut behind him.
I retreated to the cot, lowered myself onto the stained mattress, and folded my arms. The serving girl had left the jug and one cup but I did not fancy the small amount of beer I had not drunk earlier. I began to rock and frown in thought and in deepening distress. I was guilty. Of course I was guilty. But as long as no evidence was found I would be freed. There was no doubt that the scroll would be discovered and the Prince would burn it immediately. His men were probably tearing my cushions and slitting my mattress at this very moment. Its contents could be seen to implicate him with me by inference and if he wanted to be eventually named the Hawk-in-the-Nest he could not afford to be even lightly brushed by the shadow of suspicion.
But that was all the evidence against me. That was all. And could I be condemned for a simple agreement to put forward the Prince’s claim with his father in exchange for a promise of advancement? Once Ramses the younger destroyed the scroll, there was nothing at all to point to me as Hentmira’s murderer or the one who almost took Pharaoh’s life. As long as that arrogant Paibekamun played his part … I sighed and, rising, walked to the door. “I would like water, and a little incense to burn in here, if it is permitted,” I said. “The stench is becoming overpowering.” One of the guards turned his head.
“Our watch is almost over,” he told me, “and when our replacements arrive I will send water to you. Perhaps by then you will have your incense burner also.” He looked away, out over the blinding expanse of rough ground, and I retreated to the cot once more.
I must have dozed, for I came to full consciousness to find myself curled up on the foul-smelling mattress with one stray shaft of red sunlight falling across my hip. There was a commotion outside, and, confused for a moment, I presumed that the guard was changing, but almost immediately I realized that it was sunset and a new face under a forbidding helmet was pushing open the door. Stiff and thirsty, I came to my feet.
The room began to fill with men. A scribe stalked to the far wall, and after a disdainful glance at the floor he laid down a reed mat, sank cross-legged onto it, and began to arrange a palette across his knees. After him came four figures I did not recognize. Their gaze swept over me, curious, disapproving, eager, and after them the Prince himself shouldered forward. He held a small object wrapped in linen, and my heart turned over. As I extended my arms and bowed very low my breath caught in my throat and I fought to regain control of it. It could not be. Could not!
I straightened and met the eyes that had once turned my body into a furnace and made my dreams feverish with lust. He was as handsome as ever, filling the small space with his virility and good health, but I no longer wanted him. He was a pretty toy whose brilliant colours had obscured his lack of substance. His voice, when he spoke, gave me a tremor that faded almost as soon as it had come. “Let me introduce the men who will be your judges, Thu,” he said, and his jewelled fingers moved from one to the other. “Karo, Fanbearer on the Left Hand of the King; Pen-rennu, Royal Interpreter and Translator; Pabesat, Royal Councillor; Mentu-em-taui, Royal Treasurer. All honest servants of Pharaoh and of the gods, who have sworn to render an impartial verdict.” I was trying to keep from glancing at the thing the Prince held in his other hand, trying to find within myself a composure that would cushion me against whatever shocks might come. What role should I play? I was not yet sure. Respectfully I bowed to each of the ministers in turn.
“I greet you, Lords of Egypt,” I said. “Forgive me for not doing you the honour of receiving you correctly but I no longer have the facilities to do so. And as you can see, I have not been able to attend to my personal needs today.” I pulled at my hair with a rueful smile. “I am disgracefully unwashed.” One of them, Karo the Fanbearer, smiled back at me, but the others went on staring solemnly as though they were halfwitted. I swung to the Prince. “I have read the wording of the charge against me, Highness,” I said. “You speak of judges and verdicts, yet is such talk not premature? Where is the evidence that I had any evil designs whatsoever against my King? Or is this an attempt to discredit me because you grew to fear the contents of the agreement that was signed between us that would grant me royal status if your father named you his official heir?” Attack first, I had thought while my mouth had been engaged in a play for the ministers’ sympathy. Be the scorpion of Ramses’ imaginings. Try to sting this perfidious Prince. I had the satisfaction of seeing him flush and blink rapidly but he recovered at once.
“Such an agreement exists only in your own corrupt and ambitious mind, my Lady,” he rebutted me loudly. “It is well known that you came to my quarters late one night and threw yourself at me in a clumsy attempt at seduction.” I think he would have gone on, but he saw the trap into which I had hoped he would fall and he changed the subject, grasping visibly for control of himself. He held out the object, folding back the linen as he did so, and I knew I was looking at my executioner. “Is this your jar?”
“No. It is not.”
“That is odd, because many people, women of the harem and servants alike, identified it as one you often took out of your medicine box when you wanted to treat a stiff limb or massage a sick patient.” I shrugged.
“I had one like it, Prince, which has since disappeared. There is nothing unique about this jar. The potteries produce them by the thousands.”
“Disappeared?” he pressed. “Why would something from your medicine chest disappear? Are you not careful with your medicaments?”
“Of course I am, but the blend of oils I used was particularly efficacious and brought relief to every person on whom I used it. It was probably stolen. The inmates of the harem are not always honest.”
“It did not bring relief to my father, or to poor Hentmira,” he replied grimly, and I flung up my arms in simulated disgust. I was very aware of the unwavering attention of the other men who stood motionless, their eyes going from one of us to the other. The soft rustle of the scribe’s papyrus could be plainly heard.
“So that is what my arrest is all about!” I said hotly. “Someone stole my precious oil and massaged Hentmira to death? Do not be ridiculous, Highness!” He smiled thinly and extended the jar.
“Take it, Thu. Hold it in your hand.” I backed away.
“I will not! Am I correct? Did someone add a poison to my oil? Is that how Hentmira died? But what of Pharaoh? If I touch it will I become ill also?”
“You should know the answer to that better than anyone,” the Prince observed. He continued to stand with the jar nestling inoffensively on its bed of linen. “You mixed arsenic into the oil. You gave it to Hentmira in the belief that she would use it on my father and he would die.
But she died instead, and the gods protected one of their own. My father is already out of his couch and grieving at your betrayal of his kindness to you.”
“How do you know that there is arsenic in the oil?” I asked him in a low voice. “You are no physician, Prince. Who told you this? And who has fed you such a foul and evil story?” The panic was creeping closer to the surface of my skin now. I could feel it begin to prick along my spine and dry out my mouth. Even as I faced the Prince with boldness it was picking at the cloth that covered my eyes and soon it would rip it away and I would see everything. Everything …
“After Hentmira had died and the King was still ill,” he began, “Paibekamun came to me. He had this jar in his hand, a hand covered with an angry rash. He told me that on the last night Hentmira had waited upon Pharaoh he had found it under Pharaoh’s couch. He knew that Hentmira had used its contents to give my father the massage he loved, for as usual he had been in attendance upon his Master throughout the evening. He recognized the jar as yours because the oil you blend yourself has a particularly rare aroma. He presumed that Hentmira had asked you for the oil because Pharaoh had always liked its effects. He did not presume that the rash he developed had come from the few drops of oil left on the lip and sides of the jar until later when he was ordered to investigate Pharaoh’s food and drink on suspicion of rot or poison. That investigation showed nothing amiss. Then he remembered the jar, and brought it to me. By then he suspected that his malady had been caused by his contact with the oil.”
“So Hentmira stole my oil!” I interrupted. “But why would she poison it? To disgrace me, her only rival? Was she so insecure in her position as favourite? She knew nothing of poisons, Prince. It is no wonder she ended up killing herself!” I was an animal at bay, cornered and terrified. Sweat had begun to pour down my face, yet I still had a shred of authority over myself. “How do you know it was arsenic that she added to the oil?” The Prince smiled, the grimace so full of triumph and contempt for me that a fresh spurt of dread flooded my body.
“She did not add it,” he said. “You did, my Lady Thu. I have spoken to many people today, beginning with your servant Disenk and ending with the Seer. You may sit. You look as though you are about to faint.” I found myself slumped onto the cot, with no recollection of bending my body to get there. I knew then that the end had come, that there was no hope for me, that I had been cruelly betrayed. I was entirely alone. I almost heard the sound of the cover being torn from the eyes of my mind but I did not want to see everything, not yet. The truth would be too much to bear.
Slowly I straightened, and with a supreme effort I looked into the Prince’s matchless face. “And what did they say?” I managed. “It can be nothing accusatory, for I have done nothing wrong.”
“Disenk tells me that she woke two nights before Hentmira took the oil into my father’s bedchamber, to find you alone in the lamplight, pouring a white powder into this jar,” he said. “When she asked you what you were doing you told her that you were unable to sleep and thought you might mix a fresh supply. She was puzzled by the powder, but as your knowledge of herbs and remedies is great and hers is not, she did not question you further.”
“It is a lie,” I said dully but could not go on, for was not the truth of that small encounter even more damaging? The Prince hardly paused in his story and I had the impression that he was enjoying building the circumstances that would damn me. Was it because I had failed him? Or because I had torn myself from his arms with an effort he could not possibly understand on that night I remembered so well, and so wounded his masculine vanity?
“On the following day you prepared a basket,” he said. “In it you placed, among other innocuous things, the jar of oil. You went to visit the Lady Hunro, your old friend and the woman with whom you once shared quarters, and once there you made yourself very agreeable to little Hentmira, the concubine who had taken your place in my father’s bed. Why did you do that? To win her confidence of course. She was a trusting child. She was very happy to receive from your hands the oil that would most please the King. The Lady Hunro tells me that you pressed it upon her with many words of friendship and exhorted her to use it liberally and as soon as she wished.”
“That is also a lie,” I put in monotonously. Hunro, who had guided me during my first weeks in the harem. Hunro who according to Hui could be completely trusted. Hunro, who had taken me under her wing and professed to admire me. Her defection did not hurt as badly as Disenk’s but the blows were coming fast, each one finding a target, and I was reeling like a drunkard from the pain. “You have tortured them, Prince, to make them say whatever you wanted.” One of the judges spoke up.
“Unlike the barbarians, we do not use torture in Egypt to obtain confessions or information,” he said primly. “His Highness’s investigation has been conducted with the utmost tact and kindness.” I did not know which one had lectured me. I did not bother to look about and see.
“Hentmira took the oil into my father’s presence and anointed him with it,” the Prince went on. “She began to suffer the effects of the poison almost at once and so did Pharaoh.”
“Hentmira added the poison and then took the oil into your father’s presence,” I corrected him without interest, and he shook his head firmly.
“Hentmira had no knowledge whatsoever of poisons and no way to obtain one,” he objected. “Moreover, she had no reason at all to do Pharaoh any harm. Was she not the favourite? Could she not expect many blessings to come? No, Thu. The poison came from the Seer. He gave it to you himself. Mad with rejection and the desire for revenge, you used it on the Divine God as surely as if you had smeared it on him yourself.” I passed a shaking hand over my features. The room was now unbearably hot, although the light was fast fading. I felt filthy and tired and my jaw ached.
“So my mentor is also charged with attempted murder?” I asked with as much sarcasm as I could muster. The Prince looked shocked.
“By all the gods, no! But it is typical of you to suggest such a thing. I myself made the short journey to the Seer’s estate early this afternoon. He was immeasurably horrified to hear the charge against you. He feels in some way responsible, seeing that it was he who trained you in the healing arts and introduced you to the palace. He says that you often visited him to replenish the supplies in your medicine box, and the last time you did so, just before he left for Abydos, you asked for arsenic, to rid a patient of worms in the bowel. He cautioned you to be very careful with the powder, as you did not have experience in its use and had not asked for it before. You requested what he considered to be an exorbitant amount, and when he protested, you laughed and reassured him, adding that any left over from your potion could be mixed with moistened grain and set out to kill the rats in the harem granaries. So you lulled him, and returned to your quarters. Needless to say, no arsenic remained in your medicine chest when it was searched earlier. You are guilty, Lady Thu. These men will verify my words before pronouncing sentence upon you, but I have no doubt that they will agree with my conclusion.”