Murder in the Place of Anubis

Year Five of the Reign of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun

There were seven bodies ready to be taken out of the natron, and the priest Raneb was anxious to see that His customer was the first to be bandaged. The widower of Lady Shapu had given Raneb a bronze vase to ensure that his wife's embalming was perfect. Raneb knew how careless the bandagers became after wrapping the dead with resin-soaked linen all day. Lady Shapu was going to be first.

Marshaling his flock of water carriers, fire stokers, bandagers, and unguent mixers, Raneb bustled along an avenue formed by mountains of natron, the salt used to dry a corpse. In the distance priests and laborers made their way to the shelters where new bodies awaited sweetening in a wash of natron and water.

 As Raneb entered the drying shed, he consulted a  sheet of papyrus containing a list of the dead, their dates of lustration and drying, and the name of the lector priest in charge of each. Before him lay a double row of alabaster embalming tables heaped with natron. The surface of each table was concave to allow the fluids that drained from a corpse to collect in funnels that emptied into stone bowls at either end of the table.

 Raneb marched down the central aisle, tailed by his  covey of assistants. He muttered to himself.

 "Thuya, son of Penno, Lady Hathor." Raneb halted  and consulted a tag attached to one of the tables. "Prince Seti." He shook his head and passed on to the next table. "Ah! Lady Shapu, priestess of… priestess of… Oh yes, priestess of the goddess Isis."

 Folding his papyrus, Raneb turned to the men behind  him. One of them yawned.

 "Close your mouth," Raneb said. "Have reverence  for the work of Anubis. You look as if we should put you in the natron along with Lady Shapu."

"I beg pardon, Lector Priest Raneb."

Raneb grunted, then pointed at the natron table. 'This is the one." He pulled a rolled papyrus from his belt. "No, you fool, don't start shoveling until I'm ready. Let me find the prayer. Here it is."

 Raneb frowned at one of the bandagers, who was shuffling his feet. The man stood still and fixed his eyes on the ground.

 "Lord Everlasting who hast died and risen again,  Lord Osiris, ruler of the dead…"

 Raneb nodded at the bandager named Pashed without  ceasing his chant. The man stepped up to the natron table holding a wooden shovel. Sinking it in the crystals, he hit a solid object. Raneb raised his brows, but continued chanting. He could have sworn Lady Shapu had been placed much deeper.

 Pashed nudged the obstruction gently, shrugged, and  began scraping away the natron from a leg. A pale, thick calf appeared. Pashed halted, and Raneb forgot to chant his spell. After forty days in natron, a body was almost black, the arms and legs shrunk to kindling.

 Letting the papyrus roll snap closed, Raneb made a  sound like a jackal robbed of its prey. "Sufferings of Isis! Who has dumped a stranger on top of my Lady  Shapu? You, and you, don't stand about gawking, get this intruder out. His essence will mix with the lady's."

 Raneb began to circle the natron table. "I'm tired  of all these mistakes and carelessness. The Controller of the Mysteries is going to hear of this."

 Pashed and his fellows scrambled onto the edge of  the table and began shoveling. Feet appeared. Discolored natron shifted to reveal a stained kilt. Pashed wrinkled his nose at the odor of feces that arose when the garment was uncovered. Beside Pashed, the fire stoker brushed crystals from the head of a man. Uttering a curse, the fire stoker leapt backward off the table. Raneb scowled at the acrobatics, but the fire stoker pointed a shaking finger at the head of the corpse. Raneb came nearer.

 Dusted with a coat of natron, webbed with the fine  wrinkles of middle age, the neck of the intruder was as pale as the rest of the body. And from the flesh of the throat protruded an obsidian embalming knife.

Meren heard a scream. A jolt of pain lanced through the flesh of his wrist, up his arm to his heart, and he shot upright, panting. The war-drum beat of his pulse hammered in his temples as he clutched his hands in the bedding and stared at the gauzy curtains beyond the bed. Slowly, he drew a bare leg up against his chest and hugged it.

 The nightmare had come to him again, when he'd  thought his heart free of the terror. Perhaps it was the
ka
of the dead king that wouldn't free him. He'd been back in that cell again, confused and alone, his stomach in knots from its emptiness, his back a mass of welts from the beatings. All because his father refused to cast out the old gods of Egypt for Pharaoh's god of the sun disk.

"No." Meren squeezed his eyes shut, but he was too late to stop the memory from invading his thoughts.

 He was back in the cell again, and they'd come to kill him, but he didn't care anymore. He was eighteen, and he welcomed death, for they'd made his body a vessel of torment. He would join Osiris in the netherworld. Meren lay on his stomach on the packed earth floor. Naked, his back caked with dried blood, he watched dirty feet march toward him, stop, and shift to stand beside his arms. He bit his lip to stop from whimpering when the guards pulled him up. He wobbled on his feet, and they had to support him so that he remained standing. They dragged him out of the cell into another where shadows danced in the light cast by torches.

 A cold hand touched his face, and Meren opened his  eyes. Akhenaten stared at him with his rabid black eyes. Meren smiled at the king, amused that Pharaoh would think it fitting to watch him die. His position as heir of one of the oldest noble families in Egypt had gotten him thrown into a cell in the first place, and now it would bring him death in the presence of the living god.

 "I should kill you as I did your father," the king said. The cold hand toyed with a lock of Meren's hair. "But Ay speaks on your behalf. He says you're young enough to be taught the truth. My majesty thinks not, but the One God, my Father, commands me to be merciful to our children. Isn't that so, Ay?"

"Yes, Divine One."

 Meren blinked and swiveled his head. Ay had been  beside him all along. Meren pulled his eyelids open wide in an effort to see his mentor. Ay's narrow face blurred and then sharpened, and Meren sucked in his breath. Ay caught his gaze and held it.

The king spoke again. "We will ask once, Lord Meren. Do you accept the Aten, my Father, as the one  true god?"

 Meren stared into the eyes of his mentor and gave his head a slight shake. Ay was asking him to bring damnation upon his
ka.
Father had died rather than risk his eternal soul; could he do less? But Ay wanted him to live. Meren could see it in his eyes. And may the gods forgive him, Meren wanted to live.

 Meren opened his cracked lips and said in a voice  that was hoarse from screaming, 'The Aten is the one true god, as thy majesty has pronounced."

Ay nodded to him, but the movement was so slight that Meren could have imagined it.

 "Words come easily for you," the king said. "But my  Father has shown me a way to claim your
ka
for the truth. Bring him."

 The guards dragged him after the king farther into the  cell. They stopped before a man crouched behind a glowing brazier. Meren's vision filled with the red and white glow of the fire. Before he could protest, he was thrown to the floor on his back. This time he couldn't stop the cry that burst from him as his scored flesh hit the ground. A heavy, sweating body landed on his chest. Meren arched, trying to throw the man off, but the guard was twice his weight.

 His face was turned toward the brazier. Beside it he  could see the fine pleats of Pharaoh's robe and the edge of a gold sandal as he fought to keep the guards from spreading his right arm out. In spite of his resistance, the arm was caught and pinned so that his palm was up. A guard knelt on his upper arm, making it go numb. The man behind the brazier lifted a white-hot brand and approached Meren.

 He couldn't see his arm because the guard was kneeling on it. He felt a wet cloth wipe the flesh of his wrist, saw the brand lift in the air. It was the sun disk, the Aten, the circle with sticklike rays extending from it  and ending in stylized hands. The glowing sun disk poised in the air, then descended quickly as the guard set the hot metal to Meren's arm.

There was a brief moment between the time the brand met his flesh and the first agony. During that instant, Meren smelled for the first time the odor of burning flesh. Then he screamed. Seared flesh screamed along with him. Every muscle he had spasmed while the guard held the brand to his wrist. When it was taken away, Meren's whole body broke out in a sweat. He shivered as the pain from his wrist rolled over him.

He lost consciousness briefly, and when he opened his eyes, the men who held him were gone. The one who had branded him was smearing a salve on his burned flesh. The pain receded. Hands lifted him to face the king. Akhenaten's black fire eyes burned into him as no brand ever could. Pharaoh took Meren's hand, turned it to expose the mutilated wrist, examined the crimson symbol of his god. He placed Meren's hand in Ay's.

 "He is yours now. But remember, my majesty will  know if the boy is false. If he falters from the true path, he dies."

He dies.
Meren covered his ears to block out the  voice he still remembered after sixteen years. He twisted, lifted his legs, and set his feet on the cool tiles of the floor. Standing, he took three steps, swept aside the filmy curtains that sheltered his bed, and stepped down from the dais. Moonlight spilled into the room from the open door that led to the reflection pool. Meren went out into the garden and knelt by the water. He dipped his hands in it and splashed his face. His eye caught the white scar on his wrist, and he quickly turned his arm so that he couldn't see it. Sometimes the old wound would itch for no reason, and he would go  through torture trying not to touch it. He never touched it unless he had to.

 Returning to his chamber, Meren went directly to the  niche where the statue of the god Osiris rested. He knelt and said a prayer in which he begged the god to intercede for him with the other gods. That done, he turned to a casket inlaid with turquoise and ivory, took three leather balls from it, and tossed them, one after the other, into the air. The spheres sailed up and down. The only sound he listened to was the soft pat of the leather hitting his palms.

 He'd tried magic charms to ward off dream demons.  He had once tried his physician's sleeping draught. He had tried wearing himself out with a woman. Then his son had given him the leather balls, and Meren had discovered peace. He couldn't think of anything else if he wanted those spheres to stay in the air.

 Faster and faster he tossed the balls, until his heart  was filled with the motion of his hands and the flight of the small missiles. Gradually his breathing slowed and the strung-bow feeling left him.

 Once he was calm, he heard the rapid slap of bare feet on the floor outside his room. Meren caught the  balls and put them on the floor. He went still, straining to catch the direction of the sound. Slithering to the opening that led to the courtyard, Meren put his back to the wall and edged around the door.

 In the shadow of a palm tree he spotted a black figure, which stooped and picked up something with both hands. Meren smiled when the intruder straightened and almost tottered backward. A honey pot clutched to his protruding belly, mouth screwed up in concentration on his task, the son of his son dipped a fist into the vessel  and jammed it into his mouth. Meren called softly, "Remi." Remi looked up, saw Meren, and grinned a sticky grin. Meren laughed. Striding to the child, he picked him up and rested the boy on his hip. The honey pot jammed into Meren's stomach, and Remi shoved it in front of his face. Rescuing the pot, Meren squeezed the child to him.

 "Greedy little bee, you're the first one up as usual." 

Oblivious to the slumbering quiet of the household, Remi began to chatter in a loud voice. "I want to play, and I can't find my bow and arrows. Nurse hid them."

"Quiet! If you're good, you may watch me juggle." Meren went back to his room with the boy in tow. Remi was his best audience for juggling. Count Meren, Friend of the King, one of Pharaoh's confidential intelligencers, couldn't forgo his dignity in public by juggling like a common entertainer. Kysen had long since lost patience with watching Meren's antics, but Kysen's son had not.

 Setting Remi on the floor with his honey pot, Meren  took up the juggling balls once more. As he tossed them from one hand to the other, the first light of dawn filtered into the room. Often—when he was troubled over what mischief the Hittites were up to with Pharaoh's Syrian vassals, or whether the death of a rich Babylonian merchant was an accident or murder—he would put aside his worries and juggle, only to find that turning his thoughts away from the problem had somehow helped him see it differently.

 He needed the serenity that tossing the spheres  brought; soon he would wash, dress, and go to the palace to attend Pharaoh. A gold band would cover his wrist, blocking from the king's sight the mark put there by Tutankhamun's brother. For the king could bear the sight no more than could Meren; it was a reminder of  madness, of near civil war, and of death.