Year of the Hyenas (3 page)

He strode past
long
stretches of whitewashed walls that encircled the estates of the nobles
and gentry. Only when a group of private guards emerged from an alley,
loud and boisterous, did he stop, withdrawing into a statue’s niche.
When they had passed he set out again, the hilt of his gleaming knife a
comforting weight in his hand.

When he
reached the
Boulevard of the Goddess Selket, he slowed his pace. Peering around a
corner, his face a study in stealth and craftiness, he paused to stare
at a bronze gate across the square. Fresh torches on either side of it
streamed droplets of fire onto glazed tiles. No doorman guarded it—the
servant had probably deserted his post to slip away to the festival.

The man’s
movements
suddenly became as balanced and predatory as a stalking leopard’s. He
moved quickly to the gate. Looking furtively to the left and right,
checking for any hidden guard, he took hold of the handle and pulled.

It did not
move.

The man shook
his head
in muddled confusion, as if this eventuality had not occurred to him.
He pulled harder. The gate scraped loudly at its hinges but did not
budge. It was locked.

A distant
pounding
came to him through the dark, and he realized that his own hands were
beating desperately on the bronze plates. Over and over again they
smote the doors, and there was wailing, too. He seemed almost surprised
to realize it was his own voice that he heard.

“Naia!” he
screamed
into the night. “Naia!” His grief-stricken yells merged with the clamor
of his own frenzied fists on the door. “Naia! Come out to me!”

When there was
no
response, he backed into the middle of the street, standing on the
hitching stones near the well, howling even more forlornly,
“Naaaiiiaaaa!”

He beat again
on the
gate and shrieked the name for what span of time he did not know.
Finally he heard the noise of wooden shutters opening in the house. A
line of distant torches on the balcony came toward him amid a scuffle
of feet and muffled shouts. Torches now shone in the forecourts of the
other houses on the small square.

He heard the
voices
working their way from the house to the street, and he smiled joyously.
Naia was coming to him! He would hold her in his arms again, feel his
lips on hers again, the press of her body—

Servants
wielding
cudgels and whips burst from the gate, led by their foreman. They fell
on him instantly. His curved knife slashed out. The servants began to
fan out and encircle him. One of the younger men lunged at him with a
club, and the man slashed the servant’s arm to the bone. Seeing their
comrade’s blood flow so enraged the others that they fell on the
black-eyed man in earnest.

Though he
fought back,
slashing a nose or cracking a skull with the dagger’s hilt, some part
of him disengaged from the fight to observe the event from afar. Small
details came to him as odd fragments of time amid the frenzy. He saw
their hard, brown eyes like those of desert jackals circling him. He
pondered their fists as they came nearer, and when they connected,
there was an almost delicious taste of blood inside his cheek. A club
caught him in the side of the head and he crumbled before the well. He
fell to his knees, the dagger dropping from his hands. Seeing their
advantage, the servants resorted to kicking him with their hard, hempen
sandals.

He no longer
felt
their blows. He curled into a ball waiting for his death, smiling a
little, calm overtaking him. He suddenly heard from far away the voice
of a man yelling at the men to cease their punishments, to raise him to
his feet and hold him.

The man who
spoke was
hastily throwing a linen wrap over himself. He was young, like the
black-eyed man, but in his handsome face lurked the indefinable essence
of nobility—or fortune.

“I’ve told you
before,
Semerket,” the man said in a clipped, toneless voice, “that if you
disturbed my wife again, I’d thrash you.”

Semerket
struggled in
his captors’ hands. “
My
wife, Nakht! Mine!”

“Hold him!”
commanded
Nakht. “Strip off his tunic.”

The foreman
moved to
rip the cloth away from Semerket’s shoulders.

Seizing a whip
held by
another servant, Nakht spoke into Semerket’s face. “I’m going to beat
you worse than I beat my horses—worse than even my servants. I’m going
to show you that if you dare approach my wife again, the next time I
won’t hesitate to slit your peasant throat.”

“Brave man,
Nakht,
when your men hold me.”

“Turn him
around.”

A lash rang
out. Even
through his wine fumes, Semerket felt the whip strip away a ribbon of
flesh from his back. Despite any resolution not to give the man
satisfaction, he groaned aloud.

Another lash,
and he
felt the blood dripping down his back. Then another. He lost count
after the sixth blow and fell to his knees. His ears rang from his
pain. Dimly he heard a woman yelling at Nakht to stop. Stirring once
more to life, he saw the swirl of white linen skirts before him, and
smelled her familiar scent of citrus oil even before he saw her face.

“Stop it!” she
screamed. “You’ll kill him, Nakht! Please, my lord— please! Do not beat
him further!”

“He has made
our house
a place of lamentation long enough. Go back inside.”

“My lord, give
me a
chance with him. I will make him see reason.” She saw Nakht hesitate
and pressed the advantage. “I promise that if he comes again after
tonight, I won’t interfere.
Please.
Leave me with him.”

Nakht angrily
beckoned
to his men to withdraw, but loudly told the foreman, who was wiping
away blood from a gash on his forehead, that he was to stay and watch
over his mistress from the gate. “Don’t take your eyes off her!”

The servants
retreated
into the house. The foreman sent them to their rooms to have their
wounds tended and stitches taken. He himself took up the post at the
gate, as commanded, hiding in the shadows, ready if his lady needed him.

The woman sat
cross-legged, leaning her back against the well. She turned the man
over and he groaned as she cradled his head in her lap. She unfolded
her linen headdress, crumpling it into a ball, and began to dab at the
blood on his face. His eyes fluttered open and he smiled up at her.

“Your perfume…
sweet.”

Her voice was
tired.
“I’m not wearing it for you.”

“Have your
servants
bring a torch, that I can see you again in the light.”

She sighed.
“Oh,
Ketty, why do you shame me like this?”

He spoke
simply,
surprised by the question. “I want you back.”

She pressed
her lips
together. “You must stop all this—shouting my name in the streets every
night. It can’t go on. Look what has happened to you. I could prevent
my husband from killing you this time—”

“
I
am your husband!
Me!”
His shout was so
fierce that the foreman thrust his head from the gate, his hand
clutching a spear. Naia caught the movement in the dark and shook her
head. The gate closed a bit.

“No, Ketty.
You are
not my husband. Not anymore.”

“Always.”

“We’ve said
the words
of divorce. You returned my dowry.”

“I didn’t know
what I
was doing! I was drunk!”

“When were you
not
drunk at the end?”

He looked up
at her
beseechingly. “I’ll give up wine this night if that’s what you want.
From now on, only water. Not even beer. By the gods, I swear!”

Her eyes
filled with
tears as she rocked his head gently in her lap. “Oh, my baby, my baby,”
she crooned to him as to a child. “What am I going to do with you? You
know why I left you. Our marriage was cursed.”

“It was the
blessing
of my life.”

She looked
away and
sighed raggedly. “I thought it mine, too. For a while.”

Eagerly he
pounced on
the thought. “It could be again!”

“No. The gods
have
willed it.”

“Gods,” he
muttered
darkly, spitting out the word as if it were poison. He reached behind
himself, felt for something, then suddenly clasped the dagger that he
had dropped in the street. He held it to her throat, the curve of its
blade against her neck’s gentle arch. “If you won’t come back to me,
then he can’t have you either. I’ll kill you here, now!” There was an
abrupt grating noise as the foreman came bursting through to the
street, spear raised.

She did not
move her
head, but her voice was steady. “No!” she firmly commanded the foreman.
“Go back! He won’t do it.” The foreman paused, spear still held high.

Semerket
laughed. “How
do you know I won’t? Our blood will mingle together here in the street
and the poets will sing of it for centuries.”

She didn’t
speak for a
moment, and her tears spilled upon his face. “Because… because, my
love, you would kill another with me.”

It was a
moment before
he registered what she had said. Then he winced as if she’d struck him
with a blunt object. She nodded.

“Nakht’s child
is in
me.”

Very gently
she
removed the dagger from her throat, handing it to the foreman. “Take it
away now,” she told the man in a low voice. “Somewhere where he won’t
find it.” Then, looking down at the man to whom she was once married,
she took the hand that had held the blade and placed it on her belly.

The tiny
movement
beneath the linen pleats burned his hand hotter than any fire, cut
deeper than any blade. The black eyes in his face became fathomless.
Slowly he sat up, not even registering the pain of his beating.

Naia could not
meet
his gaze and looked down at her own hands instead, aimlessly clasping
and unclasping her crumpled, bloodied headdress. “Do you finally
understand why you can’t come back, Ketty? There is no hope, ever, that
I can be your wife again. In the surest way, the gods have decided.”

He slowly
extricated
himself from her lap and stood up. Blood ran from his wounds, and his
breathing was shallow. He said nothing. He turned away, put a hand to
his forehead, and then shook his head to clear his senses. His lips
formed silent words, but none emerged. With a desperate final look at
her, he stumbled into a nearby alley. He began to run.

“Ketty—!” Naia
yelled
after him, standing and calling to the retreating figure. “Ketty…” He
stopped, but only to vomit against a wall. Without looking back, he
began to run again into the dark.

“Mistress—”
The
foreman hovered nearby. “Do you want me to follow him?”

She shook her
head.
“No. Tell the others he won’t be coming back. They can relax their
guard.” She pressed a fist into her mouth to stop the moan that
threatened to escape her. She steadied her breathing, and followed the
foreman into the house. With great care, he locked the gate behind her.

“HE WENT TO HER HOUSE AGAIN.” The woman’s harsh
voice filled the small courtyard with indignation.

Sitting in his
tiled
bath, four rooms away, Nenry brought the razor to his skull and drew it
across his scalp. The morning sun stabbed painfully into his eyes from
the mirror held by his whimpering valet, reminding him he had drunk too
much at the Osiris Festival.

Merytra, his
wife,
continued her tale from the courtyard. “Banging on the door, calling
her name over and over again. Of course he was drunk.” When her husband
did not respond, her voice became even shriller. “Are you listening to
me?”

“How could I
be
listening to anything else?” Nenry muttered.

“What?”

He called out
cheerily, “I’m listening, my love.”

His wife
strode into
the bathroom, bracelets jingling as merrily as donkey bells. Her
expression was far from tinkling, however. Nenry noticed how his valet
shrank from her. Merytra took this as her due and continued her
harangue. “It’s a disgrace. And if you’re not careful, it’ll cost you
your position!”

She watched
him scrape
his head ineffectively with the razor. “Here,” she said with impatient
superiority, “let me do that.”

“I can
manage.” In
truth, Nenry did not want his wife anywhere near him with a razor.

“You’ll only
hack
yourself to pieces and bleed all over your linen again—and I’m not
going to wash and pleat your robes twice in one week. I said, give it
to me.” Her voice was firm, and the glint in her eye fixed.

Nenry wanly
handed
over the razor. Hastily he brought his hands down into the water to cup
his soft genitals. She was done in five expert sweeps of the razor.
Angry red welts rose burning to replace the stubble, but there was
indeed no blood.

“Thank you, my
love,”
he said, moving to the farthest recesses of the tiled enclosure,
rubbing the stinging welts with one hand, the other still clasped
firmly to his midsection.

“Well?” She
crossed
her arms.

With great
determination, he forced his features into something resembling casual
indifference. “Well…?”

She looked
with a
sideways glance at his cringing valet and grabbed the cloth he held.
“Leave us,” she ordered. “Bring water from the city well. Two jugs.”
The man nodded dully and backed out of the bathroom, limping.

“And don’t
linger!”
she called out. She dried her husband briskly with the piece of
tattered cloth, as she would a child or a dog. “This is the last time I
let you pick a servant. What were you thinking when you chose this one?
Better to buy a trained baboon from the temples. At least then we might
be able to keep something in the larder for ourselves.”

“I don’t
understand
why you’re having trouble with him, my love. You’re always so clever
with servants.” This was a lie. Two had run away, and another had
hanged herself.