One of the great geniuses of the ancient world was Imhotep. He was the vizier of the Third Dynasty king, Djoser, and the architect responsible for the construction of Djoser’s tomb, known as the Step Pyramid. That pyramid complex, at Saqqara, was constructed around 2650 BC and was the first known stone building in the world. The following story takes place in Imhotep’s old age but refers back to an incident in his youth. Most of the characters named actually existed, including Peseshet who, like Imhotep, was a physician. She became the “overseer” or director of female doctors.
Deirdre Counihan comes from a literary family. Her grandfather was the prolific writer W. Douglas Newton. Her father, Daniel Counihan, was a writer, painter, journalist and broadcaster and her mother, Joan, is an historian. With her sister, Liz (who is also a writer – see my anthology Mammoth Book of Seriously Comic Fantasy) they produce a small literary magazine, Scheherazade. Previously a teacher, Deirdre is a specialist in art and art history, particularly archaeological art, and runs an artist’s Open House.
Mid-morning of the second day after their arrival, they found Udimu dead.
His nursemaid had missed him at first light, but finally found him when the ape Huni ran screaming out of the garden latrine. Small white feet and little legs down to the knees protruded from the sandbox; the rest of him was crammed incongruously inside. Horrified, the two gardeners looked at each other and then, taking one small leg each, hauled him out.
They laid him on the mud floor, the favourite son, to await Lord Kanofer, his father. His pathetic lock of childhood hair swung to one side as his head lolled backwards. They saw that his throat had been slit from ear to ear, but a length of fine linen had been rammed into his mouth, so hard that some of it protruded through the jagged cut. His pointed child’s face was bloated by his agony, his lips forming a rigid circle of horror, drawn back from the pearly milk teeth. His eyes were closed. His chubby infant fingers gripped into the fists of his final agony.
“Ah, no! This cannot be – he is just a baby!” The desperate nursemaid wrung her hands in horror. “Who would do such a thing?”
“Udimu? Have you found him?” His three older sisters came hurrying up, gathering round the door of the latrine, peering in and then falling back in disbelief. Peseshet, the eldest, broke through the others and knelt down beside the pathetic body. She dabbed at the jagged end of the cut with the edge of her kilt.
“Poor beautiful, baby – you that are always so pale.” Tenderly, she eased open the tiny clenched fist. “Ah see!” Her voice broke. “Here is a bit of his sleepy-shawl – he would never go to bed without it – they must have wrenched it from him!”
“He is dead?” The baby’s other sisters, Intakes and Meresank, had now been allowed through the throng of horrified servants. “This is insane.”
“Someone has cut his throat, poor little ka.”
“This must be the razor that did it!” Intakes stood poised, not daring to bend down and touch it, but pointing to something that lay further into the darkened hut. “I think it may be Father’s.”
“Oh, don’t be crazy.” Meresank was sobbing uncontrollably. “It could be anyone’s! Hasn’t anybody been sent to fetch Father and our brother Imhotep and the doctor? We shouldn’t be touching anything till they get here.”
“Insanity on insanity,” wept Peseshet. “There is the razor, but where is all the blood?”
Someone had recaptured the pet ape Huni, and he stood whimpering, tied to a palm by the walkway. And maybe he was the only one of them that knew that this was not the first murder in the family he had witnessed – if he understood what murder was.
It was fresh mid-morning – still too early for polite visiting – but the young Royal Physician Iry was received with all the deference due to one permitted to touch the body of God. As impeccable servitors ushered him through the vast, faded opulence of Imhotep’s family mansion, Iry found himself, yet again, astonished that someone with the taste and austerity of this venerable lord should continue to live there.
There was no one in the two kingdoms of Egypt whom Iry revered more than this increasingly frail old man. While the inspiration of Imhotep’s thought reigned proverbial on every lip, and all stood in awe before the breathtaking splendour of the sacred edifices that it had been his to mastermind, Iry, uniquely, understood that while his own powers as a physician were a remarkable gift from the gods, they paled into insignificance when compared to those of this discreetly dying gentleman.
Iry was ushered through the great studio – scale models, the fruits of Lord Imhotep’s life of labour for the royal family and the gods, lay everywhere bathed in the amber mote-flecked silence. A sudden beam of golden light from the garden came flooding over the masterpiece, Great Djoser’s pyramid tomb, stepped in stone and pointing to heaven.
Iry drew a breath of awe – today, over on the far banks of the river, its vast completion stood surrounded by the pyramids of those lesser deities, Djoser’s descendants, all set in stone for eternity. This workshop of vacillations attested to the patience and forbearance with which Imhotep the wise, over the years, had conducted them on their path towards immortality.
The light glanced across the statue of Thoth, benign in baboon form, naturally presiding over any such place of endeavour. “O Thoth, grant me wisdom like Imhotep,” begged Iry. “Steer me lest I offend or hurt him!” For that great old gentleman – showing no professional or family jealousy – had once steered Iry towards the exalted position of service that he held today, always reminding him that service must be pivotal to everything he did.
Now, in the course of that service, Iry was obliged to perform a most distasteful task. Something His Sacred Majesty had been reading in the royal archives had intrigued him – something on which Lord Imhotep could likely shed some light!
“He will fall for your honey-tongue, Iry!” the fascinated Pharaoh had decided. “Everyone knows he respects your integrity!”
Doctor Iry shuddered. Nothing was less likely in this case. If Lord Imhotep had considered something better left unrecorded for all these years, he had good reason – better reason than serving as salacious entertainment for a bevy of inquisitive young princesses, which was probably the real driving motive behind the royal interest. Righting uncovered wrongs, somehow, did not ring true from King Huni.
All too soon the young doctor found himself sitting nervously by the cool tranquillity of Imhotep’s lily-covered pond. Things were not going well. At any moment, Iry sensed, his lordship’s legendary restraint could be in jeopardy.
“So, his majesty has finally taken to a quest for knowledge!” Imhotep sat, taut and fastidious in his cushioned chair. “But what wonder of Earth or stars succeeds in prompting him? A disgusting family murder, best forgotten – thoroughly investigated years ago! Why, I was scarcely a boy at the time!”
“But . . .”
“Contrary to popular belief, I do not know everything,” hissed the old man; then, suddenly, he smiled. “You know, Iry, they even say I leapt from the womb issuing instructions to the midwife! Such nonsense. Why does the king imagine I might have any important observations concerning such ancient darkness?”
But Iry’s imagination was awash with crimson – the blood of a two-year-old with a slit throat. “Obviously his majesty has read what exists about the case,” Iry gulped. “He knows who the culprit was said to be – but it was not a simple death – he feels there cannot be so simple an answer. I was astonished to be told the murdered child was one of your brothers . . .”
“My only brother; Udimu was my half-brother. My father had two wives.”
“Truly, I did not appreciate that! Royalty – you constantly confuse me!”
“Ah, Iry – how deftly you flatter, these days – but we were only fringe royalty. Like you, our duty lay in serving those at its core.”
“And were you happy? I had always found your family such an inspiration. Could such horror have been foreseen?”
“Foreseen? Yes, we were, originally, a very happy family, my elder sisters Peseshet, Intakes, Meresank and I. We were the children of peace after all those years of civil strife. Our dashing father, Kanofer, had risen through it all by his talents. Our dear mother, Princess Redyzet, was a half-sister to the Great Queen Nemaathap.”
“Indeed, it is the records of her inquisitors that have captured Pharaoh’s imagination!”
“Then I need hardly remind you that this beautiful and wise lady enshrined the royal blood-line. Originally she was married to the king, their father, and was mother of our favourite young uncle/cousin, Crown Prince Djoser.
“But the old king, my grandfather, suddenly died. To everyone’s surprise – but presumably hoping to avoid the sort of anarchy that having a child-king can bring – Queen Nemaathap chose to marry her only half-brother, Senakhte, thus making him the new Pharaoh.
“To be able to do this, my half uncle Senakhte quite ruthlessly divorced his seemingly barren wife Lady Heterphernebti – who was a particular friend of Mother’s. My sympathetic parents rushed to provide a loving home for her and her disturbingly light-fingered pet ape (whose name, if I recall aright, was Huni), and so all our troubles began.”
“Heterphernebti – not a name that I recall from the transcripts. And as for the ape . . . !”
“But crucial – his majesty may not be wrong, possibly much lies unrecorded – probably better so. Well, my two younger sisters took to our ex-aunt at once, but the eldest, Peseshet, and I could never really trust her. Within the family, Heterphernebti and Senakhte held a clouded reputation, hints of intrigue around the throne – but now she was stranded high, dry and very bitter. You would think that a rich commoner would have expected no less.
“But the royal barns groaned with produce to preserve the land from famine and the royal nursery was filling with half-sisters for our beloved Prince Djoser, so the gods clearly endorsed Senakhte’s stark decision (anyway, that was what Peseshet and I were amused to conjecture).
“Innocent days! Father, now Royal Supervisor of Works, would take me out with him at each fecund brown Inundation to inspect construction – and I learnt the months and years of careful preparation needed for any plan to reach fruition.
“At harvest time when this labour ceased, we always sailed down to our Southern estates, where my father had been born.”
“Where your brother was done to death?”
“Indeed. Then one year brought another newcomer to my parents’ household – her name was Miut – kitten. She had a remarkable story.”
“That name is mentioned!”
Imhotep paused and Iry fancied a slight smile creased his mouth.
“This stranger, Miut, strode into my father’s fields, claiming to be the wife of one of our tenants, Bedjames – met while undertaking a distant voyage for Pharaoh, but now gone missing. To my adolescent eyes – I was just into my eleventh year – the most striking thing about her was that, unlike the rest of the field workers who were sensibly naked, this young woman kept herself covered. A superb shawl was wrapped clingingly around her most curving parts – ‘stolen, no doubt,’ Mother laughingly observed – yet Mother and her perpetual guest, Heterphernebti, acquired shawls of equal quality at the soonest opportunity!”
“Quite so, my lord, but . . .”
“But keep to the point, eh, Iry? Lady Heterphernebti expressed great sympathy for this abandoned wife and so Miut joined our household while we investigated whose responsibility she was. She became a favourite with everyone.
“But dear, beautiful Mother’s health was starting to give us concern. Poor Peseshet was studying to be a female doctor and was desolate at proving unable to help her. Lady Heterphernebti, assisted by Miut (who had wonderful ways with headaches), was all solicitude. It was Heterphernebti’s hand that mother held, not my father’s, not mine, in her final moments. I have never, ever, recovered from the desolation of that thought.”
Imhotep paused, and Iry noticed his eyes had moistened.
“And so to Udimu. The swiftness with which Father and Heterphernebti chose to marry after Mother’s death and the arrival, scarcely eight months later, of my little brother, was a shock for everyone. Heterphernebti had been considered barren, old, yet here she was producing a child, and a child phenomenon at that.”
“I see the complexity of it! Tell me more about Udimu.”
“Many of the exaggerated tales that have been put about concerning my birth and earliest years have probably originated in real stories of my pale new brother. He was born with teeth, he could talk well before he could crawl – and he was crawling early too. He was like a young adult even before he was three. ‘This is a full-term baby!’ Peseshet insisted at the birth, daring to voice what none of the other women wanted to consider – that Udimu had been conceived well before his parents’ marriage or Mother’s death.
“So the notion that my sister Peseshet hated Udimu started the moment he was born – everyone knew she remained irreconcilable to the circumstances of Mother’s passing. However, I can affirm that with the rest of us, Intakes, Meresank and I, she was fascinated by, and rather proud of our new brother.
“Heterphernebti found the joint roles of Lord Kanofer’s consort and happy new mother draining. Though Father ensured that she was pampered and cosseted, she preferred only Miut in attendance to soothe her head. The other maidservants were needed to monitor poor Huni, the pet ape, who could not decide if Udimu was meant to be some new toy to be dismembered or some titbit to be eaten!”
“But was Udimu such a truly remarkable child, my lord?” Iry tried to steer the old man back to the point. “Pharaoh particularly wanted to understand this – the death was so thorough, so brutal – three different ways! You were such a brilliant family, did he so outshine you all?”
“Absolutely! A complete enigma – from his earliest words, we never heard him make a grammatical error, yet he was baby enough to require a neatly hemmed section of his mother’s expensive shawl to comfort him to sleep.
“He loved to be told stories; he didn’t mind if they were truth or fiction, but he understood the difference, which astounded me because one of our favourite family diversions was convincing poor Intakes of complete nonsense. She used to look so like Mother when she opened her eyes wide in wonder, it was almost like having her back, laughing amongst us. Everyone joined in the task of keeping Udimu captivated – and stayed to be captivated as well.
“Miut’s tales were the ones that held the biggest audience. Prince Djoser, and sometimes other friends and relatives, would sit enraptured here under the stars as she described her epic journey and the astonishing things that she claimed she had witnessed – perhaps, strangest of all, in her own land, a well that could turn any object into stone. You could give a leaf eternal life, she said, or preserve a flower forever.
“Prince Djoser was deeply taken by that notion of eternal stone, but Udimu became obsessed. He would build tiny stone casings for the spent flowers that dropped here on the garden pathways, in hopes to keep them fresh forever. He wanted to tell stories too. One evening, when most of the family were gathered here by the pool, he said to us:
“ ‘Last night I had a dream that I was a little bird, but Imhotep was a big bird, and I flew under the shadow of his wing. At the edges of the earth, we were met by a vast, golden ship, hauled on golden ropes by a crowd of golden men. Imhotep and I perched on the ship and it took us deep into darkness until we stopped at a huge gate. I peeped out from under Imhotep’s wing and saw that the gateway was made of writhing bodies, and that the gatepost was turning in the socket of a lady’s eye. Everyone got off, and we went into a vast hall alive with flames. In the middle were some huge golden scales and a big black dog and the most lovely golden feather.’ ”
“Incredible!”
“Yes – we were all shaken – could someone his age know about ‘The Boat Of A Million Years’ and the judgment hall of heaven? Whose heart was about to be weighed against the Feather of Truth on the scales of Anubis? Was Udimu a seer on top of everything else?”
“Yes . . . his majesty was wondering . . .”
“But Udimu had not quite finished. ‘I thought I would try to fly down and pick up the pretty feather, only Nurse woke me up. But that lady who was lying with the gatepost through her eye – she looked like Intakes.’ The effect of this on poor Intakes was terrible – she fled in tears, followed by the other girls. Father and Heterphernebti were ashen-faced. Miut sat very still, hunched in her shawl – she recognized a dream of power when she heard it.”
“Only the immediate family were there?”
“On that particular occasion – but Father tried to discourage Udimu from story-telling after that. Poor baby, he was just approaching his third summer, when we set off up-river for the most tragic harvest of our lives.
“Mid-morning of the second day after our arrival, they found Udimu dead. His nursemaid missed him at first light, but they only finally found him when the ape Huni ran screaming out of the garden latrine.”
Imhotep drifted into silence and Iry wondered whether he had fallen asleep. The two sat quietly for some while, Iry listening to the laboured breathing of this most remarkable man. Then Imhotep raised his hand and a servant brought water and dates. He invited Iry to partake and then continued.
“In the fields the harvest ceased. My father stood on the terrace, white-lipped. He could not bear to go back into the house, he could not bear to go deeper into the garden and look again on what he had seen. This was the terrible death of a child, his child, and in the territory of his jurisdiction.
“We had a doctor with us, of course. The poor man had known us all since birth and now had to speculate on who might have done this. After a careful examination, he allowed Udimu’s tiny body to be taken back to his sobbing nurses and tight-lipped sisters to be washed and wrapped in linen ready for burial.
“Heterphernebti would not look on him. Perhaps she thought that if she didn’t, the horror would go away. She sat in her room, alternately whimpering and wailing, and refused to see even the indispensable Miut. Father made no attempt to comfort her at all.
“By evening the last layer of linen, soaked in resin, was wrapped round our darling and he was placed in the clothes chest of cedar that was my pride and joy — but I wasn’t going to stint my poor brother in his final moments. A proper coffin would be made for him as soon as we returned to civilization. Tenderly, my sisters and I placed Udimu’s comforter, found crumpled on his bedroom floor, beside him for his longest sleep.
“Then happened one of the strangest things. By that evening, my father had Peseshet quietly separated from my other grieving sisters and locked in a storage room. We were all crying and repacking our belongings, Father being able to commandeer transport at short notice. I was dumbstruck when he sent for me and said that my sister Peseshet was the culprit and that he was sending her home under guard ahead of everyone else. I was to travel with her to maintain the proper propriety.
“ ‘Whatever can have given anyone such an appalling idea?’ I had blurted out before I had stopped for thought. ‘Did the doctor tell you something that the rest of us didn’t see? Why, Peseshet wouldn’t harm a fly – more likely she would splint the leg of one that someone else had swatted!’
“But he was adamant; this was not the dashing father of my childhood but the solemn hypocrite who had married Heterphernebti with Mother still fresh in her grave.”
Imhotep sucked for a moment on a date, gradually removing the stone and looking at it as if it were something dredged from his memory. He placed it on a plate and stared at it for a while before continuing.
“That silent boat journey homewards was the most miserable experience of my life. Peseshet was completely bewildered and the guards, longtime family retainers, did not know how to treat her. ‘Why does Father imagine that I did this awful thing?’ she repeatedly asked.
“ ‘Father told me that you had found out that he was going to share Mother’s Legacy for us with Udimu – and, with your training, you, uniquely among us, have the knowledge of how to kill.’
“ ‘Since when have I cared about riches – enough to murder? And in that way – his throat was slit from ear to ear, for heaven’s sake – where did I get the razor? Why, I’ve never touched one in my life! What woman would kill with such a thing?’
“ ‘You muffled him in his sleepy-shawl and swept him out into the garden so that you could kill him silently. The doctor says Udimu was throttled – there were finger-marks on his throat. You had stolen Father’s razor but wrapped it in the bandage so as not to cause more defilement by touching it – but chiefly to make people imagine that the killer must be a man.’
“ ‘Incredible – so it was Father’s razor!’
“ ‘Yes – but it was one of your bandages!’
“ ‘There is no shortage of them about!’ She smiled at me, almost to break my heart. ‘How is your poor leg now?’ I had hurt my leg on the voyage out – how typical of her to be thinking of me at such a time. ‘It seems I can trust no one,’ she said. ‘How could anyone concoct such a terrible scenario? This must be one of Heterphernebti’s imaginings. Once we are back, Imhotep, I beg you to go to Prince Djoser. I would feel safe to tell him.’ Naturally, I had never intended doing anything else.
“Outside on the deck the poor ape Huni, sent back on the same craft and securely tethered to a rail, whimpered all through the night – but they would not let Peseshet comfort him.”
Iry’s mind sifted these facts against those recorded in the archives. So far Imhotep had added much flesh to the ancient bones, but not revealed anything new. Even though Imhotep was remembering back some sixty years, Iry believed he knew far more than history had told, but he knew his old mentor had to tell the story in his own time. For all that Iry wished he would come to the point, he harnessed his impatience and sat back, trying to look relaxed and hoping this would encourage Imhotep to reveal more.
The old man looked at him briefly before his eyes once again receded into the distant past. Iry had known him all of his life, and yet this was but a fraction of Imhotep’s many long years and he wondered just what mysteries there were to reveal.
“Typically, our prince was there to meet us,” Imhotep resumed, “the tragic news having been sent ahead. We all knew the story must come out, but horrifyingly, in the short time our journey had taken, it was already assumed that my sister was guilty and that my poor father’s problem, apart from burying Udimu, was to find a tasteful way of disposing of her.
“Our ship arrived in darkness and, as we left, they were shoving poor Huni, screeching, into a cage. Peseshet, her wrists bound, was taken, heavily veiled and in a carrying chair, torchlit, through the sleeping town. I still remember following, limping beside my Prince – the blessed relief of talking to one, who after all, knew all about trusting nobody and watching one’s back! Me, a young lad of just thirteen summers, and Djoser, my hero, being scarcely twenty.
“We went over and over the details of the murder, trying to fathom out a perpetrator for that frightful death. ‘Udimu couldn’t have known the latrine,’ I remember explaining to him. ‘He hadn’t been shown the garden yet. But he needed little sleep and sometimes wandered at night.’ His nurses, exhausted from supervising him on the boat, unfortunately, had relaxed once back on dry land.
“I’d heard no report of a break-in at the villa and had to assume the guilt of someone from within – if Pharaoh now has visions of dark magic being involved, I fear nobody saw any trace at the time.
“I had tried to establish where everyone had been. Heterphernebti and Father, I knew, seldom slept together in those days. She had been in her rooms attended by her maids, while Father had spent much of the night poring over details of the harvest in his office. Intakes and Meresank and I had also been sleeping in our rooms, exhausted servants in attendance. So, too, had Peseshet – but somehow in her case this had become negative evidence as to whether she had been in her bed or not!
“Prince Djoser was outraged. The Prince always loved children and so was appalled at the details of Udimu’s death when I described them. We racked our brains in the darkness all the way back to this house, but to no avail.”
Again, Iry had to blink away that terrible crimson vision of the baby, head yanked back by his child-lock, eyes rolled up in fear.
“They took poor Peseshet to a secluded room that they had readied for her over there in the south wing. Prince Djoser would take no nonsense from my father’s steward when he tried to discourage him from coming in with us.
“ ‘Whoever can you have offended, Peseshet, to incur this sort of treatment?’ said our cousin. ‘How could anyone imagine you capable of such an atrocity? Whoever killed poor Udimu certainly meant to do it, didn’t they – but why?’
“ ‘Peseshet,’ I said to my sister, trying to encourage her. ‘You told me there was something particular you wanted to say to the prince, something that you could trust only to him?’ She looked so beautiful at that moment – could she trust me enough to tell me too?
“ ‘Something to show, not something to say.’ She had hidden it in a tiny screw of papyrus and slid it into the hem of her kilt. She dropped it into his outstretched palm. ‘It’s part of what Udimu was clutching.’ It was a bit of tied-off fringe.
“ ‘It’s from Udimu’s sleepy-shawl,’ I said. ‘We all know that. They must have ripped it out of his hand when they grabbed him.’
“ ‘No!’ she said. ‘Look again. We assumed as much, but when it came to folding Udimu’s shawl to put . . .’ – her eyes filled with tears at the memory – ‘. . . to put beside him, I noticed that it was perfect – there wasn’t a bit missing from the fringe at all. It doesn’t come from Heterphernebti’s shawl. Look at the colours in it, Imhotep – tell me whose shawl it really came from!’
“The dye was most distinctive, fabulously expensive, which was why it had been suggested that it was stolen. It was Miut’s shawl, carried from her distant land.
“ ‘This requires most serious consideration from a higher authority.’ Prince Djoser said. He rewrapped the scrap of thread and took it with him.
“The next day Prince Djoser and I came to the peace of this garden. Just over there, by that clump of iris at the edge of the pond, I almost tripped on one of Udimu’s tiny towers, built like a stairway around all four sides. The gardeners had left it, I suppose, out of respect that it could have been fashioned by a two-year-old, and I must admit that I broke down and wept at the sight of it.
“ ‘Oh, this is terrible,’ I said. ‘For how many years are we going to be stumbling into his eternal little piles of stone?’
“Djoser laughed in sympathy. ‘Eternal stones – now there is a thought. If we ever make a royal tomb together, Imhotep, it will be of eternal stone!’ and I limped beside him up to the desolate house.
“The rest of the family arrived two days later; Udimu was laid to rest with due solemnity in the family grave. Everyone managed great dignity, just as they had after Mother’s untimely death.
“Lady Heterphernebti, though, was privately giving cause for concern. She refused to eat any food that she had not prepared herself – nor would she have her devoted Miut anywhere near her.
“My father, who had the Pharaoh’s authority for the territory in which the dreadful crime had been committed, let it be known that it was now a matter for the past. To his shame, it was all a tragic domestic incident. No–one was allowed to see Peseshet. I lived in terror that she might be ‘disappeared’.
“I did not know what to do. Should I share my knowledge with my other sisters? Peseshet had feared trusting anyone. They were bewildered. They could not believe that Peseshet could do something so terrible, but equally they didn’t believe that Father would do anything so unjust. It must be some court secret that he could not tell us.
“But for the Prince and myself, it seemed the other way about. If Miut was involved, why was my father protecting her at the expense of his own daughter?
“At last the prince came quietly to me and said, ‘When I told my mother about what has been done to Peseshet, she cried. Miut may go missing very shortly.’
“I found it difficult to imagine Queen Nemaathap allowing herself to be moved to tears. But then there was little that that great lady did not understand about being a sacrifice for the good of her family.”
Imhotep paused again. Iry had some sense of what was to come and knew the next part of the story would be painful for Imhotep to recall. Iry bowed his head, hoping to appear as a pupil not inquisitor. With a voice broken by emotion, Imhotep continued.
“When my father discovered that Miut had been taken by agents of the Great Wife, he hanged himself from a beam. Everyone was numb with astonishment – and poor Intakes and Meresank devastated by this new grief.” Again he paused but Iry said nothing. Imhotep coughed to clear the emotion from his throat and continued in more defiant tone. “But Father had known his time was up – he was just a poor upstart who had made himself too many enemies. Under interrogation much emerged. Miut had been a uniquely skilled poisoner and Father had found out. It transpired that this was not such a surprising thing for him to light upon, because he was a consummate poisoner himself. His swift rise to riches in his youth had been based as much on these skills as on any of those immense talents for which he was later justly revered.
“Miut’s services had been used on countless occasions – starting with the removal of my beloved mother when Heterphernebti found, to her astonishment, that she was expecting my father’s child. Mother would never have been reconciled to his betrayal of her with her best friend. She would have insisted on a messy divorce and taken all her riches and probably his good name with her.”
Imhotep smacked his hand down on the armrest of his chair as if that were an end to it and stared at Iry intently. Iry found himself almost cowed by the steady gaze and had to look away towards the garden. He spoke, his voice sounding distant, but with enough conviction to remind Imhotep of his purpose.
“But Udimu was not poisoned, my Lord. The files record the death of your father and the fate of Miut, but say no more. One is left to draw conclusions that your father was directly involved in the death of his own son.”
Imhotep struggled to lean forwards and locked Iry fiercely in his gaze.
“We could not bury Father with Mother and poor little Udimu. He was a great man but now he is forgotten. His name was erased everywhere in his tomb and you will find no mention of any relative or companion, or any provision for mortuary priests to remember him. Kanofer is entirely alone. I did that to him and he deserved it for what he did to Mother and Peseshet and Udimu. They loved him and he betrayed them.
“Toddling out into the darkness of the garden, what did little Udimu find? Father and Miut at a tender moment? More likely, he overheard something it was vital he did not repeat and so had to be silenced. He may have been only two but he understood all that he heard even if he did not always appreciate its significance. He would certainly have told others of plots and schemes. Silence and secrecy are the essence of the poisoner’s art. Father, realizing that hardly anyone would ever know the exact details of Udimu’s murder, must have ruthlessly decided on finding a quick scapegoat in Peseshet. Why would Miut, who was so very useful to him in his craft, ever be implicated at all?
“Heterphernebti got her just deserts. She must have known something of my father’s secret business all along. Her fear of Miut once her mind started to go after her baby’s death was enough to convince me. Mighty Pharaoh, not wishing his previous wife to know any hardship, took her into his keeping. I do not know when or how she died, or where she rests. I do not care.
“Miut met the fate of any poisoner who has lost her friends. She was rather more loyal to my father than he was entitled to expect. I later discovered that she had not revealed all that she might have done to the interrogators of the Great Queen.
“Peseshet survived to be set free, as I am sure I need hardly tell his majesty, who shares her blood. She would have been destined for removal when the time was right, but her servants were vigilant. She was happy to be a minor queen for love of a prince with so many charming sisters – her name forever kept alive by the disciplines of medicine that she founded.
“So there you have it, Iry, all very shocking – but a tidy ending. What more could his majesty require to know?”
Now was the moment that doctor Iry had been dreading. He cleared his throat. “My Lord. Forgive me if I think on this.” He got up, a trifle stiff from sitting for so long on the hard stone, and walked around the pool, where Udimu’s potent story had been told and where Imhotep had stumbled on the tiny tower of stone. He looked at the venerable gentleman sitting among the irises and noticed the slight trembling of the long-fingered old hand against the whiteness of the fine linen kilt.
“Thank you, Mighty Thoth,” breathed Iry. Fine, white linen. Imhotep had stumbled. Imhotep had limped. Imhotep had found it hard to face Peseshet’s concerned eyes on board the transport home. The bandage mattered. Could it be that Imhotep was involved some way in his baby brother’s death? Again, Iry seemed to see the world flood crimson as he turned to face his childhood mentor.
“Dear master, you must know what you have just said – that Miut had not revealed all she might. How could that be, if you did not know much more than you have told me? If, indeed, you were not in some way implicated yourself?”
Lord Imhotep laughed. Iry watched the tension drain from the frail shoulders. “Whatever your private thoughts of Pharaoh, Iry, he chose you well. He is the Morning and the Evening Star and maybe he understands better than I do, that now I approach my end, as we both know I do, I need to search my soul for the truth of things. Ask me then, what more troubles you?”
“Firstly, why was that poor infant killed not once, but three times – the death for one of power? That fascinated his majesty and horrified me. What was the significance of Udimu’s dreams? Did your father truly leave his razor at the scene of the crime, an intelligent man like him? And what of the linen bandage – are you somehow concerned in that – were you jealous of him, surely not?”
The old man smiled sadly, looking back, Iry felt, across all the years to his family gathered in this garden. “What Miut never revealed was hidden in the dream, but she did not truly understand that herself. Yes, I am sure that Udimu saw the Boat Of A Million Years and was about to watch the weighing Osiris. I no longer mourn my little brother. He will come again, he was of the kind that does – a great magician. It was I who flew out from under the shelter of his wing and, yes, I was jealous of his abilities. As I draw near to the weighing of my heart, I hope I did right – but fear that I did not.
“That night, like Udimu, I could not sleep. On board ship I had hurt my ankle and we’d bound it with a strip of linen. In the heat of the night, I got up to bathe it with cold water. I entered the hallway and Udimu suddenly came scuttling out into the moonlight and toddled off into the garden. Naturally, I followed, but instantly sensed that we were not alone. A garden is a place for secret meetings, but Udimu failed to understand. There were voices coming from out there. Like Udimu, I heard what they said, but unlike him, I recognized its implication. To my horror, Udimu came running out to the two of them, all laughter. Miut was on to him swiftly and, without remorse, throttled him with the ruthlessness of any cook. Father stood dumbstruck.
“ ‘What is the matter?’ Miut said callously. ‘He would have spoken. Did you want that?’ Savagely, Father wrested the limp child from her grip, breathing deep gasps of horror as Miut continued relentlessly: ‘You don’t think he was your child, do you? Lady Heterphernebti thought she was barren, she comforted herself with many men.’
“I could not see Father’s face to judge his reaction, but from then on he moved as if in a dream. They bundled Udimu in Miut’s shawl and carried him deeper into the garden, finally ramming him down the latrine – a piece of unspeakably pointless violence. Perhaps it was Father’s anger at what he had just heard.
“I hid in the bushes until they were done, creeping into the latrine hut once they had gone back into the house. I pulled him out and tried to revive him. Remember, Iry, how young I was, how little I knew of death or how a dead body will react when moved. I even thought that he choked once or twice. I was filled with rage and fear at what I had heard and what they had done.
“When I saw what the sand had made of his poor little eyes, I closed them. His baby’s mouth, pulled back in the rictus of death, terrified me. I unwound the bandage from my ankle and placed it as a pad between his lips to hide the horror of his tongue and I left him sitting upright, decorous.
“I had no idea what to do or who to turn to. As I ran from the latrine in a panic of grief and terror, something slithered and fell in the darkness behind me. It must have been the poor baby slumping over because I had failed to prop him up correctly – but I did not turn back. I knew that if the tiny soul was still living, the pad that I had placed in his mouth would probably stifle him – but I ran on. I have lived with that burden ever since.
“When they found Udimu’s body the next morning, that razor slash was as complete a mystery to me as it was to Father. He must have been sick with shock when he saw that someone else might have discovered his wickedness – but I gather that he and Miut decided that it was the random work of Huni, who had stolen the razor. They were probably right in this. I swear to you, I left my bandage as a neat pad – not rammed right down Udimu’s throat. The ape must have done that. But for a long time afterwards I lived with the belief that Udimu could still have been alive and that had I acted responsibly I might have saved him, instead of leaving him to become a victim as Huni’s plaything. That is why, at the time and to my eternal shame, I said nothing to anyone, not even to Prince Djoser and why – ” and with this Imhotep’s shoulders stiffened, facing up to his guilt “ – why, for a while, I let Peseshet appear to take the blame.”
“But surely the ape would have been covered in blood?” Iry interjected. “Was there not blood everywhere?”
“No, Iry, there was scarcely any blood at all, not even on the bandage peeping from the wound and this puzzled everyone greatly at the time. Later, of course, I understood.” Venerable Imhotep held his former pupil deep in his gaze. “Now tell me, Doctor Iry, why would that be?”
In Iry’s mind the crimson became white, fine white linen, reverently placed. “No blood flowing, even through a gaping neck wound with the poor child upside down – why, he must have been dead long before the wound was made!”
“But of course,” Imhotep sighed. “We can see that now – I did not know then.” Again he looked deep into Iry’s eyes. “It does not absolve me. Maybe the gods decided that it was only right that such a great magician as Udimu should know a triple death. Father and Miut never appeared to suspect anything of me.”
Iry listened aghast – great Imhotep complicit in his small and brilliant brother’s death and silently allowing his sister’s accusation! However, he was on Pharaoh’s business, whether he liked it or not – he licked his lips and continued. “So what was it that you had heard that night which neither you, nor the dead, have ever revealed until now? What was so terrible?”
“It was something personally terrible for me, worse for my beloved sisters. I should have understood the meaning of what was told me by Udimu, when he sat here and described his dream of judgment, but neither he nor I understood that at the time. He thought that he saw our poor sister Intakes writhing under the gate of the judgement hall, and she fled in tears. But the person he had seen was the Princess Redyzet, our dearest mother, whom Intakes very closely resembled, and who was dead before he came into the world. She, it seems, had been as bad as, if not worse than, my father.
“My parents owed their rise to riches and success to judicious poisonings. I am convinced that their chief clients must have been my mother’s half-brother, the sinister Prince Senakhte, and his wife Heterphernebti. With Mother’s death, Father lost his chief technician.
“Later, when some particularly challenging commission arose, my stepmother had revealed that her maidservant Miut had poisoning skills as yet unknown in Egypt. Father would have understood the implication of what that meant. This must have been when he stopped sleeping with Heterphernebti. But he still made use of Miut. I think he was even sleeping with Miut, fascinated by her – another peasant made good.
“But ironically, what I and my brother (for that he will always be for me) overheard had been plans to murder the great Pharaoh Senakhte himself, for a suitable fee. However popular his regime, and exalted his godhead, he remained a person who made enemies.
“That was my terrible dilemma. Who should I tell and how? I knew that Peseshet was innocent, but I wasn’t entirely sure that I was myself. I wanted to save her, but I had not yet thought out how I could. As it was, as always, it was she and Prince Djoser who saved us all.
“I do not know who planned Senakhte’s death – if there is no information about this in the records of the Great Wife Nemathaap’s inquisitors, that could be interesting in itself. What I do know is that I preserved the good name of my mother, the incomparable Princess Redyzet, and saved my poor sisters from even more pain.
“But there it is; she whom I had thought was most good, most beautiful, turned out to be only an illusion. That is how one becomes a man. But I avenged my loss – and all my life I have tried to repay what I gained. That is all one can do. So let them weigh my heart. I, who have the reputation for understanding everything, have learned that I understand nothing at all. But thank his majesty, Iry – for his kindness of thinking of me at so auspicious a time.”
“And so Udimu’s triple death was coincidence?” gasped Iry. “His majesty had notions of mighty magic at work. He wanted Udimu’s story set in stone for him to find when he came again.”
“And he will let me fashion it? Who is to doubt Great Huni’s wisdom?” Lord Imhotep’s smile was eager and sincere. “It was not coincidence – who but the god of wisdom takes the form of an ape?”