With the death of Horemheb in 1295 BC, the eighteenth dynasty came to an end. Horemheb adopted as his heir his vizier. a former soldier, like Horemheb, called Menpehtyra, who came to the throne as Rameses I. He was the first king of the nineteenth dynasty, which is known as the Ramesside period, because most of its kings were called Rameses. The most famous was Rameses II, whose reign of 66 years, from 1279-13 BC, saw one of the most phenomenal building programmes in Egypt. This was the last glow of Egypt’s Golden Age.
Suzanne Frank is the author of the Chloe and Cheftu series that began with Reflections in the Nile (1997). Chloe Kingsley is a Texan archaeologist who, upon entering an ancient chamber in Egypt, is suddenly whisked back in time to the court of Queen Hatshepsut. Later books in the series are set in other ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean. The following story, however, is not a time romance but a straight historical detective mystery set in the time of Rameses the Eternal.
The sky was the same shade of dun as the courtyard before me, with the strip of cultivation and the dark green of the Nile laid like a ribbon between them. The grit of sand still clung to my skin and ground between my teeth, but the storm and the evil winds of khamsin were over.
Praise be, I muttered to Shu, god of the air.
“Mistress Nofret,” a priest called to me. “The foremen come, from the Village. There has been a murder.”
I pushed away from the Hathor-headed column and picked up my cat. She had spent the last hour grooming herself, trying to rid her fur of sand. As I rubbed her ears I envied her. Other than ritual ablutions, I would not see a bath until the water runners arrived. The winds had waylaid them.
The cat deposited in my quarters, I splashed my face and hands in sand-logged water, then changed into my kilt, my jewelled collar and donned my ritual mask, the head of Anubis. Wrapping it in layers and layers of linen had not protected it from the sandstorm. Tiny grains bit into my skin as I adjusted the jackal-head so that I could see out of the slits in the cheeks. An acolyte handed me the symbols of my office, First Prophet of Anubis, the adze and the snake-headed rod. I swept out of the chambers, my heart pounding as it does when I go to meet my god.
We, the priests of the Place of Purification, stood looking southwards, squinting through the dusty air. Though the winds had stopped, the sky, so far from its normal faience blue, seemed ominous. “I would have omens of this event,” I announced.
The priests ran to find a rooster. While we waited no one appeared over the ridge that separated the Village from this place, the Most Magnificent. Guide me, I asked Anubis. Sweat slicked my cheeks. The weight of Anubis felt especially heavy today. At my feet, the priest killed the rooster and the omen reader whispered to the scribe, who wrote the interpretation on ostraca.
“Prophet?” the priest recalled me. I looked into the blood of the rooster.
What did I see?
The Nile has been red, but it is due to the start of the Inundation. Pharaoh, may his name be glorious for millions of years! dwells in upper Egypt in good health with a happy heart. Nothing unusual.
Then a trickle of blood ran to the south, in the direction of the village.
It split into two channels that ran in opposite directions. I watched their paths, then –
Paneb, next to me, gasped: the two channels rejoined and formed a puddle.
“They come!” the lookout called.
While serfs cleaned the floor, incense was lit and the chants to welcome the body and ka of the deceased swelled. We sang the first of the prayers, pleading for mercy, attesting that the deceased had done nothing, robbed no cow of her milk, deprived no widow of her recompense, taken no life. He was pure.
The Foremen of both Left and Right were accompanied by the scribe of the Village. Two workmen carried the body on a stretcher between them. I could just make out the slow swing of a travelling chair lagging behind. The seeress.
Anubis consumed me in ritual. The body was in its place, the ka resting.
When I came back to myself I was in my chambers, hours later.
“Have some wine, Mistress,” Paneb said as he pulled the Anubis head off. “The Villagers await you.” I traded my masculine ceremonial robes for the more approachable and human attire of priestess. My gown was white, my wig tipped with gold and my eyes ringed with kohl.
I greeted the Villagers as the daughter of Anubis, and invited them to take refreshment. After we exchanged condolences and blessings I asked the scribe where the water was. Those of us who live in the Redland west of Thebes are brought water and food as partial payment for our service to Pharaoh (living for millions of years!).
“The administrator was waiting for the deliverers when he was killed,” the scribe said.
“Who did this thing?” I asked. “What transpired?”
“A painter. We have him,” said the Foreman of the Left, Mekhti.
“His grudge against the administrator is well known,” User, the Foreman of the Right, said. “He had threatened the administrator countless times. Once, he’d beaten him in his own home.”
“A dangerous man,” the scribe added.
“We have a witness to the murder,” Mekhti said. “She saw the painter push the administrator out of his window.”
The seeress Sa’anktet, my sister in both flesh and spirit, said nothing.
“He died in the fall?” I asked them.
They nodded solemnly.
“At what time was this?”
The foremen looked at each other. “No more than an hour before we started our walk here.” At a carrying pace, it takes two hours to reach Anubis’ temple from the Village. On foot, under an hour; riding, a quarter of an hour.
“Then it has been three hours?” I asked.
Again, they all nodded. I rose, bade them enjoy the fruits of the temple kitchens, and followed the painted halls to the washing chamber.
Anubis’ temple was inside a mortuary temple, built hundreds of years ago by a powerful woman who took the title Pharaoh. Myrrh trees flourish still in the courtyards, but only a handful of offerings are made for the benefactor. The temple itself is a wonder, with wide ramps and soaring columns, snuggled against the cliffs, a jewel secure in its setting. It will endure long after Ramessu Eternal goes to Osiris.
It is a beautiful place for my god to reside. I entered the subchambers.
The priests bowed to me and lit lamps. It has often amused me that the god of death and final purification requires the most light to complete his tasks. The scribe took up his position in the corner and together we prayed to Anubis.
“Begin, oh wise one,” the priests intoned, filling me with power. “May your eyes be as sharp as Meretseger, may your ears hear the confession of the ka, and may you discern the motive of the hearts and judge the evil of the men who seek to deceive Anubis, Opener of the Way.”
I raised my lamp and looked at the deceased.
The administrator was a short, portly man. His light skin betrayed a Libyan heritage. He had shaved this day, and I could still smell sandalwood on his skin. Earrings hung from his lobes, decorated with carnelian and lapis, which matched his necklaces. His face was cut and pieces of limestone gravel were imbedded in his flesh – he had landed face down when he fell. The wounds had clogged with dark blood, my first note to the scribe. “The deceased’s eyes are cloudy,” I said, my second note. With precise movements the priests washed away the man’s make-up, removed his jewellery and closed his eyes.
With prayers and holy waters they took the deceased’s linen shirt, stained with sweat and make-up, and his kilt, soiled from his passing. “Turn him over,” I said.
A bruise covered his buttocks, the backs of his thighs and the soles of his feet. I pressed the flesh once with my finger and watched the skin. The blood stayed. “Note that too. Bring another lamp.” Two more priests lifted lights above me. White creases intersected each other on the deceased’s buttocks. “Did you observe The Stiffening?” I asked.
“No, Mistress,” Paneb said. “I will watch for it.”
Next I checked the deceased’s hands and feet for wounds, discolouration, any other signs. Anubis help me.
Another lukewarm splashing, and I returned to my guests.
Mekhti was holding forth on some story while User and my sister dozed in their chairs. The scribe was stretched out on the floor, looking half-dead himself. I called for wine and sat.
“Explain what happened,” I said.
“Return to the Village with us,” my sister said. “We only know what we were told.”
“You have the guilty one, the man’s widow and the witness?” I asked. “In one place?”
“In anticipation,” my sister said. “Come with us.”
I gathered my red Cloak of Questioning, my Anubis head, and ordered my priests to wait.
“Mistress,” Paneb said, “the body, already it is fly-spotted.”
“I know,” I said. “I will bring back the truth. Lay the deceased in the Place of Mummification, so no time will be lost.” I must work quickly, or the deceased would be impaired in the Afterlife.
* * *
The Village is a dreary spot, but the whitewashed walls and red wooden doors camouflage the residences of Egypt’s most talented and sought-after artisans and workers. They lived in a wedge, with nothing to see except dusty rock, and no relief offered by either shade or beauty. I grew up there. My nieces and nephews are among those working in the Tomb of Many (which is rumoured to have more chambers and pits of Osiris and storerooms and altars than any other tomb in the Hidden Place).
Pharaoh, be served in glory forever! had already celebrated his third sed-festival – so new tombs have been started for the fledgling Horus and his courtiers and wives. These many projects have brought workers from as far as the Delta and the third cataract. The walls of the Village were fairly bursting with inhabitants.
The workers of the Left are given residences on the east side of the main street, the workers on the Right live on the west side. This late afternoon women were sweeping the sand from their doors, gossiping, complaining about the late delivery of pay (it was already the second of the month; payday was the twenty-eighth) and bargaining.
In truth, the Village is a women’s residence. The men, my father among them, are away except for six days a month, and festivals. In these streets laughter rings out, children play and flowers bloom. Everyone is neighbour and anything is for sale.
Birhka makes the flakiest pastries; Nefer-hebit weaves linen so fine that a date weighs more than a whole length of cloth; Ummertani works in gold, hammering the faces of the Magnificent into sheets of the shining metal, with tools no longer than one’s finger. They fell silent as I passed.
To them, the girl I was is lost, and they have never known the woman. Sa’anktet, my sister, is their friend. I am Anubis: a face one fears because it means death has come.
The sounds of wailing grew louder as we progressed down the street.
At the gate of the administrator’s ostentatious house, I stepped down, the adze in my sweaty hand, the Feather of Truth, worked in gold, worn on my breast and its image woven into the cloth of my gown. Mourners filled the courtyard of the estate – a property that would have swallowed at least three workmen’s houses – and slaves sat in rows, their kilts blue, dust on their heads.
“Show me where he fell,” I said to Mekhti.
The house was an Eastern Thebes mansion, in miniature. The main building, (boasting an unheard-of two storeys) with columned porch, looked out over a gravelled driveway and a verdant courtyard with a lotus pool, now empty. Wings spread from each side of the main house, long one-storey rooms with clerestory windows and columned walkways. A coloured cloth fluttered in and out of the second-storey window.
The administrator had left little blood on the gravel. “Has this been cleaned?” I asked.
Mekhti shook his head. “We touched nothing. Your sister said you would want to see it as it was.”
I left him and walked up to the administrator’s room. Sand had blown in and stood in drifts against scrolls that had fallen off shelves. From here I could see the path coming up from the Nile, hidden, then revealed, by the dancing curtain. The chair was next to the window, close enough to use the sill as a low footstool. A bowl of congealed cucumber salad and a crust of dried bread sat on a tray beside the chair.
“Bring them,” I called to the scribe, over my shoulder. Then I knelt, and sniffed and examined.
Downstairs I stood in the doorway. From here I could see the stairwell and foot of the stairs, I could also see into the courtyard.
Anubis, give me your vision.
The foremen chose the widow’s threading room for our venue. They seated me then brought the guilty one before me, binding him with oaths.
He fell on his face at the sight of Anubis.
“Have mercy!” he sobbed. His kilt was paint-stained, his face unshaven. He was slightly built and underfed, but I could see wiry muscles beneath his skin.
“Rerari,” the seeress said. “A painter of the Left. Husband and father of four. He was accused of stealing gold leaf from the tombs of the Magnificent Ones –”
“I didn’t!” he cried.
“He was removed from his position and expelled from the Village.”
“Lies,” he said to me. “Lies –”
“What has this to do with today?” I asked coldly. Anubis listened always but did not believe often. “Tell me what happened.”
Rerari sat up and wiped his nose on his arm. “I didn’t kill him. I came merely to converse. He sent a message, he invited me.”
I glanced at my sister; her face was as blank as a mask.
“I wanted the back wages owed me, then I could leave,” Rerari said. “For months he had put me off, told me the payment was coming, but it never has. It was supposed to be today. I thought he would be in good spirits.”
“He bade you visit him, and you did,” I said. “What happened then?”
“Nothing!” the man shouted. “He never even acknowledged me. I came during the storm, when the winds were blowing. The slave girl admitted me and I walked up to his quarters.”
Sweat trickled off the end of my nose, beneath the head of Anubis. I waited.
“I greeted him, but he ignored me. I spoke, but he didn’t deign to turn around. I wasn’t even worthy of his recognition. But I, I . . . I needed him to listen!”
“And then?”
“The slave girl saw you push him, Rerari,” User said.
“Your protestations are for naught here,” the scribe said.
I turned Anubis’ head to them, and they were quiet. “Continue.”
“Suddenly, I was furious. I ran to him, reached for his shoulders – I wanted to shake him, to make him listen . . .” The painter stopped. “I heard a scream, turned and saw the slave girl standing outside the door. The next thing I know, the administrator is lying in the garden. I didn’t even touch him.” The painter looked into Anubis’ face. “The winds did it! Everyone knows they bring madness and –”
“The khamsin pulled the administrator out his window?”
The painter looked at his hands. “Why would I kill him? He was my only chance to getting justice, my only way to petition the vizier.” He prostrated himself. “Have mercy. I did not do this thing.”
“The administrator jumped out the window,” User muttered, “rather than listen to your harping.”
I waved the painter away. The witness, a young slave girl with a slithering step, entered. She was shaking, her body bruised and sand-whipped, wearing nothing but beads and smeared kohl. She couldn’t have been12; her body had budded but not yet bloomed.
“What did you see?” I asked.
“I was in the stairwell, going to attend my master,” she said, avoiding the gaze of Anubis’ obsidian eyes. “I saw this man –” she pointed to the painter “– standing by the window.”
“Go on.”
“I saw my master, thrown by this man. I think I screamed. I raced down the stairs to find my mistress, to protect her.”
“Did he chase you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t look and I couldn’t hear. The winds were still bad,” she said.
The khamsin winds, which blew so hard and loud they could uproot a centuries old palm and deafen one to his own shout.
“In the courtyard, I saw my master. I . . . I called for my mistress and then ran to get a cloth, to cover his body.”
“Then what?” I asked her.
“I returned. My mistress had thrown herself on his body, weeping.”
“Did you go to find the painter?”
The slave girl shook her head. “I took my lady into her quarters and gave her refreshment, then stood by my master’s body and waited for the scribe to arrive.”
“When did you last see your master alive?”
“I brought perfume for his mouth, this morning.”
“How was he? Did he seem in good health?”
“Yes, he was working.” She looked at the foremen. “The payment was to arrive today.”
“Why was the window open during the khamsin?”
“It wasn’t, my lady; we had affixed a cloth to the wall, to seal it shut. I guess when he was pushed through, it tore free.”
“How long have you been a slave, girl?” I asked.
“Since the last Opet festival,” she said, staring at her feet.
Less than a year. “This is the only master you have known?”
She nodded.
The widow was brought in. The first sight of her was startling, for she was quite the loveliest woman I’d ever seen. Tears tend to swell and distend most women’s eyes, but they made hers more luminous. She bowed to me, a vision in mourning blue. The foremen and scribe tripped on their sandals to assist her – finding a cushion, a glass of wine, a wrap for her shoulders.
“Condolences to you, daughter,” Anubis greeted her.
She bowed to me, then saw the painter. “Murderer!” she screamed. It took all three men and Sa’anktet to pry her off the man. He stayed slumped on the floor, streaming blood from his chest, face and arms. He hadn’t defended himself.
“Tell me what happened,” I commanded her when she had calmed down. “With control.”
She had been in this room, spinning for thread. She had refused both mid-morning and mid-afternoon meals because the winds were making her head ache. At some point in the afternoon she heard a shout and opened the door to see the slave girl running from her husband’s corpse.
“After that, I remember little,” she said, “I was overcome by grief.”
“It was a love match, you and your husband?”
She shrugged, weeping prettily. “We had an understanding.”
“Where are your children?” I asked her.
She tore at her hair and fell to her knees. “We were not blessed by the goddess,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Bes has not come to this house.”
“Your husband was not a young man,” I said. “Was he married previously?”
She nodded. “His first wife died before she could give him a son.”
The priests would want to talk to this widow. It was the duty of the sons and daughters to maintain their father’s funerary offerings. In the event there were no children, the couple needed to hire a priest to stand in that position. The temple had enlarged its holdings ten-fold through this practice. The other choice was to adopt an adult: certainly less expensive than renting the state’s version of offspring.
“You say you heard a shout. Then you saw the slave girl running. How close were those two events?”
She shrugged. “A few moments apart, no more.”
“Do you think the shout was your husband?” I asked. “Do you think that is what you heard, his last cry?”
“You couldn’t –” the slave girl interrupted.
The girl knew where I was heading.
Her mistress glared at her, then turned to me with wide, tear-filled eyes. “I believe it was. I heard my beloved’s last words!”
I dismissed them all. My sister brought refreshments and I took off the Anubis head. “Tell me what you know,” I said.
Sa’anktet is a seeress. From childhood she knew things before they happened, saw things that were not there, but would be. She had married a young draughtsman whose life she had saved by telling him not to follow the trail of the lizard that day. His partner had scoffed at the warning and walked into the tomb, just after a lizard had crawled in. No more than a moment later, the ceiling of the tomb caved in and killed the man.
My brother-in-law did not listen so well after they were married, and thus became dinner for a minion of Sobek, the crocodile-god.
“The widow lies,” she said.
“She would have never heard his cry,” I agreed.
“No,” Sa’anktet said, reaching for a thin slice of bread, layered with smoked duck and onions. “The khamsin winds were too loud.”
“Also, he was dead long before he fell out of the window.”
She sipped some wine and poured me some. It was a northern vintage, well-aged. The administrator had not suffered from the delayed wages. They even had water here.
“If the fall didn’t kill him, then what did?” Sa’anktet asked. “And how did he fall out of the window?”
“I cannot fathom it, the method of his death.”
“Did the gods come for him, in his time?” she asked.
“There are no marks to indicate otherwise, but my instinct tells me no. The conspirators knew he was dead, because they cleaned up the refuse from his body, though a hint of the odour remains.”
She wrinkled her nose and set down her piece of bread. “The wife killed him?”
“You heard her say she was barren. His first wife didn’t conceive either. I think perhaps the fault was his, not theirs.”
“She killed him because she wants to be a mother?”
“No. She killed him because he wasn’t a father. He didn’t have any offspring and he was wealthy.”
I saw the realization on Sa’anktet’s face.
“Perhaps he planned to adopt a son,” I suggested. “ ‘If a man dies, he leaves his wife a third of the estate and the rest goes to his children’,” I quoted. Inheritance practices are something one learns in the House of Anubis.
“If he has no children,” my sister said, “the wife gets it all.”
“She’s young, could easily marry again . . .” I took a slice of the duck.
“How did the painter get involved?” she asked. “His is such a sad tale. The workers say when he was removed from the Tomb of the Many, from painting, that he upset a jar of paint and the two trails of it circled each other and then met again. The paint won’t clean away – it’s a sign of his innocence, they say.”
The hair on my unshaved head stood on end. “The accusations are false?”
“They were made, but it is more likely that the painter refused User the pleasure of his wife,” she said. “That is not the seeress speaking, but the gossip. What are you going to do?”
The image of the two ends of blood meeting together was stark in my mind. “Speak to the slave girl,” I said. “The widow has already admitted her guilt, even though she doesn’t realize it. With the winds, she could have heard nothing. If she opened the door it was because she anticipated her husband’s death. Furthermore,” I said, “there are curious marks on the chair’s leg.”
“Such as?”
“Find the cloak the slave girl claims she covered the body with. I daresay it doesn’t exist, but a length of heavy rope does.”
My sister knows the weavings of my mind well. “You think they rigged the chair to topple, to throw the administrator out the window?” She chewed for a moment. “How would they know when to do it?”
“Easy enough. If her scream wasn’t heard, she could have run down the stairs or thrown something. Anubis cares little for petty tricks. Who killed the man, is his concern.”
“So whatever the painter says, whatever his intent, a man can die only once. The administrator was dead, so Rerari is innocent?”
I nodded.
My sister stood and brushed out her linen dress. “Speak to the slave girl, she knows more than she says.” She paused. “Her manners are far above her station. And the way she moves – like a snake.” She looked at me and quoted. ‘Wisdom can be found among slave girls.’ ”
“A serpent,” I murmured. “Yes, she does move as such. Sinuous.” I stood, leaving Anubis on the chair. “I’ll go walk in the garden. Send her to me.”
The storm had torn branches and scattered flowers, and everything lay under a dimming dust. Anubis, I prayed, help your servant be just and merciful. I turned at the girl’s approach. She was still naked and the evening grew cool.
“What could happen to place a well-educated, well-bred young woman in the slave quarters of a Libyan administrator?” I asked as I inspected an uprooted sycamore. “You are young, and recently have fallen on bad times. I conclude your father must have committed a crime, thus slavery is punishment for his child.”
I heard her tiny intake of breath.
“Tell me,” I said, turning to look at her. “Was he executed? For what? Treason? Betrayal? –”
“They were lies!” she said. “He was innocent!”
As the First Prophet of Anubis, I hear this refrain as often as the rising cry of the falcon. I know its nuances. The girl spoke what she believed to be the truth. By Ma’at, her father was probably another victim of intrigue and paranoia, no more or no less than Rerari the painter. “Your mother?”
“Executed too,” she whispered.
“Brothers and sisters?”
“We were all given into the keeping of the temples,” she said. “But, the sem-priest, he . . .” She swallowed. “He made me a woman, and then had no use for me. So he sold me.”
I wished I had my mask; hearing of temple misconduct infuriates me, a reaction I cannot control. She shivered under my glare, even though she was not its victim. “He sold you so you could not bear witness against his misdeeds,” I stated.
She looked off into the sunset, that last moment before Kemt is plunged into darkness, and I saw the film of tears on her eyes. Deliberately I breathed out myself and inhaled Anubis. I must be relentless. I must have the truth of this matter.
“The painter’s children will be sold,” I said to her.
“No,” she whispered, grabbing my arm. “They are innocent. To punish –”
“You are the witness,” I said, pulling away. “Your words are his sole condemnation.”
“His wife is pregnant,” she said.
“She will be delivered before she is strangled,” I said. “The gods are not unmerciful.”
“The baby?” the girl asked, stricken.
“It will belong to the temple, to rear as they see fit.”
“Oh, mother Isis,” she whispered, dropping to her knees. “What about the law?”
“Law? Execution is the law when a life has been taken,” I said.
“But during the khamsin? I thought, I was told, I –” She froze, having heard her words.
“What did you think?”
“Crimes of passion during the winds are forgiven, they are accounted as madness brought on by the demons of sand and debris.” Her expression pleaded with me, but I needed the truth.
“It has been a tradition,” I said, “to pardon those who committed such acts, but your painter intended to lay hands on your master. Rerari intended to make the administrator bend to his will. Intended. His was not an act of passion.”
“What could be more passionate than protecting his family? What greater fire in the belly is there than to provide for one’s children?” She wept, but for those children or her own childhood? “He can’t be punished for this, he was only doing what he could,” she said through sobs. “This is too cruel.”
I touched her shoulder and felt the bones beneath her skin, the scabs on her healing flesh. I dropped my voice to a whisper, kneeling in front of her. “Your master was already dead, was he not?”
She hiccuped and looked at me over her fingers.
“Truly, how did your master die?” I asked. “Do you rejoice?” I pressed her shoulder as I spoke. “Did he do this to you?”
“I cannot say,” she whispered. “Only death will break my loyalty.”
“If you stay, your lady will bring you death.”
She looked away. “Then I will see my father much sooner.”
Fury burst from me as I got to my feet. “As you will. Serve your lady and court your own martyrdom. Forget those children who will be at the mercy of degenerate priests and unscrupulous owners. Live for yourself.” I walked away, calling for my chair and my cloak and Anubis.
I sat alone in the House of Mummification, save for the dozen bodies whose fluids were slowly draining into the pounds of natron we deposited on them daily. Across from me the administrator lay on a low sloped table, naked and washed. Waiting. “Be at peace,” I whispered to his ka, and continued to sketch on my ostraca.
What is the sign? I asked Anubis again, as I had asked all through the journey back from the Village, and all the night I had sat here, drawing the curves the blood had followed this morning, the directions the painter’s paint was purported to have flowed. After filling in all the pools and drawing the two lines coming together, the amount of ink I had used was almost unconscionable. I sketched the lines again, the bare two meeting, forming a wavering oblong.
I set the flake of stone down and walked to the corpse. “You didn’t protect yourself,” I said to his ka as I walked around the body. “You were dead before you fell, dead sitting up. Was there poison in the cucumbers? The wine? You have no symptoms, no one stabbed you, nothing bit you and caused swelling. You were not strangled. You did not fight your assailant. Speak to me,” I pleaded. “I need you to tell me what happened before putrefaction claims you.”
The corpse said nothing; in all my years of speaking to them none have answered. I sighed and rubbed my neck. How long was this day. Out in the desert I heard the lonely cry of the jackal. I glanced over at my empty chair, the ostraca before it.
I gasped.
Upside down, the two lines formed the shape of Edjo, the cobra goddess, the uraeus, the protectress of the Magnificent Ones. Cobras, who leave no outstanding mark. Cobras, who smell like sun-warmed cucumbers. Cobras, who kill with peace and stillness. I called for Djedet and lit all the lamps. The strike mark was there, hidden in a fold of flesh, where two needle-sharp fangs had penetrated straight into the biggest blood channel in the body. A second mark on his thigh.
“Bring me my embalming robes,” I commanded, “and double Anubis’ offerings this dawn as thanksgiving.”
I donned linens that would be buried with the administrator, for they would bear his body matter upon them. The priests chanted as I broke the corpse’s nose to extricate the offal in his head. I had already scooped out a lot of it, while my “slitter” sharpened his obsidian blade, when an acolyte interrupted me. He fell on his face, begging for mercy.
One did not interrupt the rites.
“A girl,” he cried, “she is bleeding and begs –”
I tore off the linen cloak and foot coverings, the face shield and cloth, and handed the long-handled spoon to Nectanab. Clad in my underdress I ran out of the door and up into the main hallway. The slave girl was leaning against a wall, gasping for air. She turned to me, her skin was ashen and her eyes already glimpsed the Gates of the Gods. No, I prayed to Anubis, not this child, not for years.
“Physician!” I shouted. “A cobra bite!”
Her chest was bandaged, but had bled through. “I cut the strike mark,” she said, then laughed. “I fear it is late.”
“The same snake?” I questioned as I held her up.
She nodded. “He gave me time to come here and tell you.”
I heard a horse whinney outside. “How did your master die?”
“Me,” she said. “My mistress, bought me,” the girl gasped as I removed the linen on her chest and replaced it with new. “I charm snakes.”
“She intended you to kill her husband with a cobra?” I asked. “Is this poison still in there?” I placed my hand on her chest; there was no way to form a tourniquet.
“I tried to suck it out, but –”
With the angle of the strike, she would have had to have been cat-headed Bast to reach it.
“I must tell you,” she said, “this morning, while my mistress spoke to my lord, I sneaked up behind him and made the snake strike.”
“Your master was seated?”
She nodded her head. The priests washed the wound with wine. Her screams were wrenching, but there was a chance she could live. When she got her breath back she said she and her mistress had arranged the administrator’s body immediately and struck him a second time.
“My lady wanted to be sure,” she said, her eyes losing focus.
“The vizier,” she panted. “My master and lady had fought. He was going to adopt a son, the vizier was bringing the documents.”
“And the painter?”
“She sent the message. No one would doubt his guilt, for they all knew the enmity between –” The girl breathed deeply as a smile stole across her face. “It doesn’t hurt. It feels like falling asleep. He will be saved, won’t he?”
“The painter?” I said. She had given her life for his family and I was to blame. “He will be saved.”
She nodded, fighting to keep her eyes open. “My name,” she mumbled, “so I am not lost in the Afterlife . . .”
I brushed her hair back from her face. “Tell me, child.”
“Nofret,” she said, and sighed.
Her body was warm still when the priests removed her from my arms. Ra had started his day’s journey but I sought the night-blackness of Anubis’ chambers. I crawled across the raised obsidian floor to his feet. I said the words for her, for Nofret, the words that she hadn’t been able to say in life: “I am pure! I am pure! I am pure!”
Those words I would never be able to say, for I had lied.
The rule of the khamsin was inviolable, a tradition begun by Amenhotep I, patron of the Village. Neither she nor the painter, outsiders both, could have known. Crimes committed during the khamsin were pardoned. Yes the rule had been abused, but it was still upheld. The painter had never been in danger of death.
I had manipulated her. Nofret, a girl who bore my very name.
When I emerged from the temple, day was full upon the land. I entered my chambers, and the girl was there, my cat sniffing her feet. “She breathes?” I said to the attending physician, stunned.
“The venom was weak, if, as you said, it was the third strike of the day. She will live, I think. Should we inform her mistress?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, her accomplice Nofret died. That is all she need know. Then execute the widow for murder with intention.”
“What about this maid?”
The cat wove between my ankles. “When she wakes, she can choose her own name.”
And her own life.