Since he took no time to wipe away the sweat, he first saw the house of Hormin through a blur of salty perspiration. The sight of the house burst the last of his restraint and he darted across the street and into the reception hall. Babbling at servants, he soon found himself in the presence of the wife.
"What are you doing here? What do you want?"
"Shhhh, mistress, we might be watched."
Hormin's wife scowled at him. "You mean someone's watching you?"
"The lord's man."
"They think you're guilty." The woman opened her brown lips and screeched.
Bakwerner ducked his head, covering his ears. "Please! Don't. I want to see your sons. Where are they?"
The wife of Hormin paid no attention to him. She kept screeching, this time calling for Imsety. Bakwerner waved his hands in front of her face in a desperate attempt to shut the woman up.
"Don't touch me, you worm." Selket rushed to a water jar that rested in a corner, lifted it, and hurled it at Bakwerner.
Bakwerner hopped aside as the jar flew at him. It crashed against the wall behind him and water sprayed both him and Selket. Hormin's wife let out a noise that combined a growl and a scream. Serving maids poked their heads around a door.
Footsteps pounded behind Bakwerner. He was caught by the shoulder and slung around. A giant loomed over him. Imsety.
"He's guilty and he's come to murder us all," Hormin's wife cried.
"I only want to talk," Bakwerner said. "You'll be sorry if you don't listen to me."
Imsety shoved Bakwerner. "Get out."
"I know things, and you'll be sorry. Fetch that brother of yours. He thinks he's so brilliant, favored of Toth. Well, he's not going to take the favor of the master from me. Bring him in here, because I know things."
Like his mother, Imsety didn't listen. He pulled back a fist that would have made two of Bakwerner's and jabbed it into the scribe's belly. Bakwerner grunted, doubling over. Imsety kicked his exposed buttocks, and Bakwerner stumbled. The giant lifted his fist again, but Bakwerner scrambled out of the way. With a staggering trot he managed to gain the street before Imsety decided to chase him.
Concerned only with keeping his body intact, Bakwerner dashed through the streets and alleys of Thebes. Reaching the wharf again, he took the ferry back across the river. As the boat skimmed over the water, Bakwerner straightened his wig and searched the faces of the other passengers. Here and there he thought he caught someone looking at him, but all were strangers and could have no interest in him. Still, as he hopped to land on the west bank, he shivered. Possibly it was because the breeze had skimmed over his damp skin. Bakwerner turned about suddenly to try to catch someone looking at him. The crowd of passengers surged around him, paying him no heed.
Hands twitching, gooseflesh forming on his arms, Bakwerner made his way back to the office of records and tithes. All the senior scribes were gone for the day. He hadn't realized how late it was, but the sun, the boat of Ra, was hurling rays at the gold and electrum on the temples and obelisks across the river. Shadows were long, distorted fiends dancing on the baked walls of the office.
Bakwerner pretended to be busy while apprentices and young student scribes set the rooms in order, packing away records, ink pigments, reed pens. With the sound of the first cricket they were gone, and Bakwerner was left in peace to think of what to do next. He stood on the loggia worrying his lower lip with his teeth. He had to talk to that little scorpion Djaper. He wasn't going to lose place because of a youth with the charm of a dancing girl. The only reason he was being considered for the post of chief was because no one wanted Hormin in it. But everyone liked Djaper, and the young man was far too brilliant. Before, Hormin would have had to be elevated for Djaper to rise. Now Hormin was gone, and Djaper had to be stopped. But how was he going to do it?
As Bakwemer pondered, lines of men and youths employed in the offices of the vizier streamed past the loggia. Students with their bundles of scribal equipment raced by, threading their way between the slower adults.Here and there a bare-bodied urchin lurked in search of a susceptible target for begging. One of them darted up in front of the loggia and planted himself before Bakwerner.
"Be off with you," Bakwerner said.
"Got a message." A toe dug in the dirt of the street. The boy lifted his eyes to the sky as if searching for the right words. "Someone you want to see is out back. Behind the pile of ostraca."
"Who? Wait!"
The boy disappeared in the flocks of workers. Bakwerner stared after him, then searched the ebbing and flowing numbers before him. No one was paying any attention to him.
Djaper. It had to be Djaper. The young fool had finally realized they had to talk. Bakwerner walked around the office to the back courtyard where deliveries of records were made. At the rear of the court was the pile of discarded limestone flakes, temporary records used to compile the permanent tax rolls and lists of exempt temple lands and citizens. It had grown taller than the height of two men since the beginning of the year.
Bakwerner approached the pile, but hesitated when he found no one visible.
"Who's there?"
There was no answer. The wind picked up, blowing his kilt against his legs, and he heard the cries of urchins as they played in the street. In the distance he could hear the bawling of sheep.
"Djaper, you young viper, I'm not afraid of you."
Bakwerner waited and listened. The tip of a shadow appeared around the edge of the mountain of ostraca. It melted along the jutting shards and vanished. He heard the click of stone against stone as one of the flakes dislodged and tumbled from its place midway in the pile.
Bakwerner hurried around the end of the pile in pursuit of the shadow. His pace picked up when he encountered nothing but the fallen ostracon. Then the shadow appeared, snaking forward from behind him.
"Ha! Playing your stupid games—"
Something heavy banged into his skull. Stinging agony brought him to his knees, but he caught himself, palms pressed into dirt. He looked up to see the pointed edge of an ostracon poised over him. Bakwerner almost had time to scream before the stone smashed into his face.
Dictating his experiences at the house of Hormin banished Meren's thoughts of the past. After sending Kysen away, he had a scribe take down all his conversations with those involved with Hormin. His memory was accurate, and he'd found that having a scribe record happenings in the presence of those under suspicion often panicked them.
He was reading through the notes taken by Kysen and his men when a foul odor assaulted his nose. It came from beneath the worktable. Meren opened the box that lay under the table to reveal Hormin's soiled kilt. Picking it up by an edge, Meren draped the cloth on the table. Waste, dirt, and natron combined to give off the smell that had finally escaped the confines of the box. Meren took a knife, cut out a square of the kilt that contained the perfume stain, and put the kilt back in the box. Setting the container outside the room, he returned to study the scrap of linen.
The yellow smudges gave off that peculiar spicy odor he couldn't identify. There were many perfumes available in the Two Lands, so it wasn't surprising that this one was unfamiliar. But the scent was curious, probably expensive. He'd have to send the scrap of linen to a perfumer, but he was sure none of the bottles in Hormin's treasure room contained a scent like this.
In another box he found the obsidian embalming knife. The gilt wood haft was decorated with the figure of the jackal god Anubis, patron of embalmers, and the words "Dweller in the chamber of embalming, Anubis. He sets thee in order. He fastens thy swathings."
Meren set the knife on the worktable and said a brief spell of protection for himself. Whoever had used this sacred instrument either had no fear of the gods or had been so enraged that using the knife hadn't mattered. It was more likely that the latter had been the case. Still, those who stole from the dead must overcome their fear, and there had been many cases of tombs being robbed in the past. Criminals didn't seem to be able to anticipate the judgment of the gods or the horrible fate of one's
ka
being eaten by the monsters of the netherworld, as happened to the sinful after death.
Asses' dung! This murder was wrought with more evil than most. It occurred in a sacred place, the weapon was sacred, the victim was a servant of Pharaoh and had gone about inviting his own killing with his jackallike behavior. His family hated him, or had cause to want him dead. His fellow scribe Bakwerner hated him. Hormin had cast his net of malevolence so wide, Meren wasn't sure it didn't include a few tomb makers or even that pitiful water carrier Kysen mentioned. If Hormin would undermine the work of a royal scribe like Bakwerner, what would he do to a mere artisan or a water carrier?
Meren was digging in a box for Hormin's signet ring, bracelet, and the heart amulet when the creak of a door hinge caused him to spin around. His hands full of papyrus rolls and ostraca, Kysen gave him a look of inquiry. Meren nodded his permission to enter.
"Today's reports," Kysen said. "And wine."
Mutemwia followed him in with a tray and left them settled in chairs with a flagon between them.
"I was just looking at Hormin's possessions." Meren held out the signet ring. It had a flat bezel with a tiny inscription of Hormin's name. The bracelet bore the man's title as well as his name, and the workmanship was good.
Kysen gestured to include all of Hormin's things. "None of it is unusual for a scribe of Hormin's standing. His clothing was of good, though not the best, quality, as well."
"I know. But you didn't see his treasure room. The man hoarded, Ky, so we mustn't overlook any sign his possessions may give us." Meren wrapped his hands around his wine goblet and sighed. "I don't know. There's something wrong, but I can't decide what it is. I need to juggle."
"Oh no," Kysen said. "Not while I'm here." He bent down and gathered up a handful of records, shoving them at his father. "These will distract you."
There was silence while they both read.
Kysen said, "The city police report the arrest of a tavern keeper for the prostitution of children."
Meren's mouth tightened, but he kept his gaze on the reports in his hand. "The judges will dismember him." He tapped the papers with one finger. "A tax collector has beaten a peasant to death. He was punishing the man for repositioning the boundary stones on his land, and he hit the man's head instead of his back. And one of the mortuary priests of the temple of Amunhotep the Magnificent is accused of diverting grain from the treasury for his own use."
"Stupid," Kysen said.
"What?"
"The mortuary priest is stupid. One doesn't steal from the father of the reigning Pharaoh; one steals from the mortuary temple of an older king or prince who's been forgotten."
"True. Anyway, the only other report from the necropolis is that another laborer has fallen to his death. He was on his way from the nobles' cemetery to the Valley of the Kings. I think that's the third accident this year."
Kysen waved a papyrus roll. "The vizier has sent word that the vassal prince Urpalla wants more of Pharaoh's gold to buy mercenaries to fight the Hittites." Kysen stopped when his father groaned and threw a papyrus bearing the royal seal to the floor.
"What's wrong?"
"May the fiends of the netherworld take her," Meren said. "One of Pharaoh's half sisters, Princess Nephthys, she's pregnant and won't name the father."
Meren almost shuddered at the possibilities opened up by this latest disaster. The right to the throne of Egypt passed through the female line. Nephthys was the daughter of a minor royal wife and Amunhotep the Magnificent, but women with less royal blood than she had tried to claim the throne for their sons.
"Shall I burn that?" Kysen asked, indicating the report on the princess. Even at home they couldn't afford to leave writings from the king lying about. He took the paper from Meren and touched it to the flame of an alabaster lamp.
As he dropped the last curling bit of papyrus, Iry-nufer walked into the room and saluted. Eyes bleary from lack of sleep, he wasted no breath with polite salutations.
"Lord, one of Hormin's servants saw Bakwerner at dusk on the night of the murder. He was skulking in the alley next to the house when she passed by on her way home, but when he saw her, he left."
"She's sure he left?" Meren asked.
"Yes, but then she went home, so he could have come back. But that isn't all. Bakwerner visited the family of Hormin after we left them. He eluded the man set to watch him and came creeping about, dodging into doorways and out until he was sure there were no strangers about. Looking for one of us, I'm sure." Iry-nufer gave Kysen a self-satisfied smile. "When I saw him, I found one of the maids and told her to listen to what he was saying."
Meren said, "It couldn't have been too difficult a task given the way those people yell."
"The lord is wise," Iry-nufer said. "He started out talking to the wife of Hormin. The maid couldn't hear everything, but she thought he was pleading. Then the old woman screamed, and that older brother came in and yelled at Bakwerner, shouting that he was here to cast blame for the murder upon the family. I heard the noise and ran into the house. Bakwerner was yelling, but Imsety beat him, and Bakwerner scuttled out of the house like a beetle chased by a goose."
Meren leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. "Where was the young one?"
"The young one?"
"Djaper." Meren sat up and eyed Iry-nufer. "Where was Djaper?"
"He never appeared. Used to such commotion, I suppose. I left when I saw that no one was going to be killed."
Meren said, "I want to know where Djaper was when his brother was fighting with Bakwerner. And I'll speak to you later about this incident, Iry-nufer."
"Anything else?" said Kysen.
"No, lord. The man assigned to Bakwemer arrived and followed him back to the office of records and tithes. It was getting late, so when my replacement arrived, I came to report."