by N. L. Holmes
“Have Nub-nefer deliver it. No one would think anything of it. They’re friends.”
A wave of reluctance rose in Hani like a case of incipient nausea. “Do we have to get her involved? I don’t even want to know whose name is on this sherd. How much less my wife?”
“They’re following you, Hani, not Nub-nefer,” said Mery-ra, to Hani’s surprise. “As Amen-em-hut says, if they’re friends, no one would think twice if she paid him a visit.”
Hani pursed his lips, reluctant. Finally, he said, “All right. Neferet, you can read the name for your mother. I don’t want to see it.”
“Chances are, they’ll just say, ‘I’ll find you a place to stay,’ so you won’t know where I am anyway. Any of you.” Amen-em-hut climbed to his feet. “My eternal thanks, Hani.”
Hani embraced the little man, thinking, Just don’t get us all killed.
The salon had grown dark as they talked. Hani could see through the clerestory that twilight was upon them, the sweet greenish half-light just before the sky sank into velvety night. A few stars spangled the east. “Why don’t you go to bed, brother? The servants will be back any minute, and while I doubt if they even know who you are, I see no point in flaunting your presence.”
Amen-em-hut nodded, and Hani led him toward the stairwell. “The room to the left at the top. That’s where the children stay when we’re here.”
The priest turned and took his brother-in-law by the arm. In the darkness, his gaunt face was tense and vulnerable. “May the Hidden One bless you, my friend.”
Hani chuckled, suddenly tired and a little giddy. “Which hidden one? You or the god?”
⸎
Hani took Nub-nefer aside as soon as he and the others arrived in Waset and told her quietly about finding her brother. At first, he thought she hadn’t even understood him, her reaction seemed so calm, but then, suddenly, her face collapsed into a kind of uncontrollable expression of anguish, and tears of relief spouted from her eyes. “Oh, Hani, thank the gods! Thank the King of the Gods. Mut, mother of us all, thank you, thank you!” She smiled through the curtain of tears, her elegant nose running unheeded. “I thought he was dead for sure, Hani. Oh, thank you for finding him, my love.” She grabbed her husband’s face and kissed it all over.
Hani hated to dampen her happiness, but he had to warn her. “We mustn’t tell anyone—not the girls, not Anuia. Especially her. She wouldn’t be able to control her joy, and that would be noticeable immediately to anyone who might be watching her.”
“But Neferet knows? Then everyone will know. Don’t delude yourself.”
“Keep her away from Anuia.”
Nub-nefer looked up at him with starry-lashed eyes. “That seems so cruel.”
“I know, my love, but it’s for the good.” The real cruelty is Amen-em-hut’s. He’s as bad as the king in his way. Everyone else is being sacrificed to his vision. Aloud, he said, “Neferet will read you the name on this note, then you must pay a visit to your old colleague and deliver it. I mustn’t know where you’re taking it. Do you understand, my dove?”
“And then he’ll stay with them? Can’t I even see him before you spirit him away?”
Hani considered this request. What would it cost for the women to move down to the farm before Amen-em-hut moved out? “Perhaps. Let’s see how fast things start happening. How close is everyone to being packed?”
“The girls are all ready. We’re just taking one handmaid for us all. The other servants can manage, don’t you think?”
Hani agreed wholeheartedly, although he never would have dared suggest it. “Neferet, my duckling. Come here,” he called.
Neferet bounded into the room, quacking and flapping her arms. “How can I serve you, noble Papa?”
He put a steadying hand on her shoulder. What kind of father am I to involve her in this dangerous business? “Read this silently, my dear, and whisper the name of the addressee to your mother. Don’t tell me.”
She perused it carefully then pressed her cupped hands to Nub-nefer’s ear, and Hani heard a hissing of incomprehensible syllables.
Nub-nefer looked up, her face determined. “I’ll go right away, Hani, before we leave for the farm. I’ll take some of the figs and put the message in the basket, so no one will think anything is out of the ordinary.”
“Thank you, my dearest. Then, I hope, we’ll have no more responsibility in this matter.”
So conscious was he of the danger of their activity that Hani nearly jumped when his father called from the vestibule, “Hani, your friend is here.”
“Which friend? Or are you implying I only have one?”
“Oh, I thought you were expecting him. It’s that Mane.” Mery-ra toddled into the salon as Nub-nefer, knotting a shawl around her shoulders, passed hurriedly into the vestibule.
“Didn’t you invite him in?” Hani did his best to conceal the sinking feeling in his middle. His life was like a rickety scaffold that was coming apart and tumbling down on his head all at once—with results that might well be fatal.
“He said he’d wait in the garden.” Mery-ra followed his daughter-in-law curiously with his eyes. “The homestead is a busy place this morning. Where’s the mistress of the house going in such a cyclone?”
Hani pushed past his father grimly. “Where is Mane?” He stumped out onto the porch and saw the emissary standing in the graveled path, a smug grin on his face.
“Hani, old friend. I thought you’d never come see me as you promised.”
“Did I promise—” Hani began, but Mane cut him off with a discreet finger to the lips. He said in his usual booming voice, “Lunch is waiting. Did you forget? I hope you didn’t eat.” He took Hani by the elbow and steered him to the gate.
Hani saw that he was trapped. Everything was happening at once. “Please, Mane, not now. I have so—”
“Keliya is leaving soon. We need to send him off.” Mane lowered his voice as they passed through the gate. “Stop resisting me, friend. We’re probably being watched.”
Hani was too tired to fight. Some ineluctable net was closing around him, and he felt like an unsuspecting duck on the breast of the River. He let Mane pull him along down the lane, but he shot the emissary a dark look. “What’s going on?” he hissed.
“Keliya and his men are preparing to take their report back to the king of Naharin. He wanted to say goodbye to his friends. It may be a year before we see him again.” Mane continued to burble cheerfully as they directed their steps to the quay. A small fishing boat was waiting for them there. They climbed in, and the steersman pushed off into the current, heading upstream.
“Where in the name of the seven-headed demons are we going, Mane?” Hani demanded as soon as they were well out into the water.
Mane was staring back at the bank behind them with eyes narrowed against the late-morning sun. “A destination I think is safe, but I didn’t want to take chances.”
Neither of them said anything until they’d put to shore somewhere near the southern edge of the city. “Good. Good,” muttered Mane. There they waited for several minutes while Hani fought his rising sense of unwillingness. For half a dja of grain, I’d jump on the next boat and go home, he thought mutinously. At last, a long, slim private yacht with a grinning Bes head on the prow cruised up to the bank and threw out the gangplank. Mane, still looking around him, led the way up to the deck. The two men seated themselves in the rear pavilion, and Mane drew the curtains along the sides.
“I don’t suppose you’d tell me what’s going on.” Hani thought he knew, but he wanted an explanation. “Is this your boat?”
“No. It belongs to a friend.” Mane shook Hani’s knee in a jovial gesture. “You know what’s going on. If someone is tailing you, this should help lose them.”
“You’re taking me to Akhet-aten? I’d have liked to have warned my family.” Hani shot his friend a look of annoyance. “Did you know the queen called me for an interview? She knows I met with Kiya, and she warned me to stay away. This
is direct disobedience.”
“Maybe I’m taking you there, and maybe I’m not. And yes, I did know that.” The emissary to Naharin grinned broadly, but Hani wasn’t appeased.
“This is no game, Mane. You’re in danger, too, you know—if my peril doesn’t move you.”
But Mane just continued to grin. Hani shook his head, as if Mane were some incorrigible child, and blew out an angry breath through his nose.
They slid swiftly, downstream this time, the paddles rhythmically dipping and splashing. Hani could see nothing of the banks, since the curtains were drawn. He’s kidnapped me, he thought, warming to the idea. If anyone asks, he kidnapped me.
The better part of the afternoon had passed before the boat turned toward the shore. Mane rose and drew Hani after him to the side of the boat. They were out in the middle of nowhere—a scatter of little farms and irrigated fields along the River was all that met Hani’s eye. Palms and tamarisks waved lazily in the hot wind. A second elaborate private boat stood anchored just off the shore. In the near distance, hazy with sun shimmer, a whitewashed villa stood by itself—some expensive country place—surrounded by trees.
“Who lives here?” Hani asked, trying not to sound sullen.
“Another friend. A Mitannian merchant and his Egyptian wife. This is where Keliya stays sometimes.”
They disembarked and mounted the covered litters that stood by under the shadow of a willow. Before long, the heat of the fall sun fell away, and cool shade flickered over the curtains as the litters moved beneath trees. Finally, the bearers set the vehicles down, and Mane emerged, Hani at his heels. They were at the door of the villa he’d seen from the River.
“Enter, my friend,” said Mane with a smile, but his face was tense and his eyes cast around him uneasily.
The property was furnished, but it seemed to be vacant—no porter at the gate, no attentive servants hurrying to welcome them in and wash their feet. Then, ahead, in the dimly lit salon, Hani saw Keliya peering toward the door. His lugubrious face lit up when he saw the two men. “Hani!” he cried. “He got you to come!”
“He practically abducted me,” Hani said tartly with a sideways glance at Mane. “Where is she? I need to be home by nightfall.”
Keliya turned back and said softly in Hurrian to someone in the shadows, “You can come out, my lady. It’s our friend.”
Hani and Mane entered the room at the same time Lady Kiya stepped out from the other door. She was wrapped in a gauzy shawl that by no means concealed her pregnant condition, a bland, long wig such as any housewife might wear, upon her head. No jewelry glittered at her throat or wrists, and her sandals were plain. Adorned only in her youth and natural beauty, she seemed very vulnerable.
“Oh, Hani, tell me what you’ve found out,” the King’s Beloved Wife cried in Hurrian.
The four of them sat knee to knee, more like coconspirators than a royal lady and her court. Hani launched right in without any gallant small talk. “I’ve found out you lied to me, my lady. And that makes it very hard to help you.”
She lowered her eyes then cast them guiltily at the other two men. “I was afraid,” she said defensively.
“You told me your... adventure with this sculptor took place two years ago, and he told me it was less than a year, a fact I had his master confirm. You said nothing of any blackmail messages before the coming of the two men of Naharin.”
Kiya bit her lip, her big eyes frightened.
“Let me ask you again: are you sure the child you’re carrying is the king’s?”
She put a hand to her mouth, and her eyebrows crumpled. She said in a small voice, “How can I know until I see him?”
Hani pressed relentlessly on. “The queen is the one blackmailing you. And now Kha-em-sekhem has been murdered. Nefert-iti isn’t playing around. She knows I talked to you. She knows you’re pregnant, and she suspects the child may not be the king’s. No doubt somebody in your service is being paid to spy on you. She has you in a very dangerous place, my lady. And I’m in danger too. Her people are watching me now. That’s why I haven’t come back to you before. Short of assassinating the queen, which is absolutely not feasible, I don’t see how you’re going to avoid ruin.”
“Easy, Hani,” Mane protested. “You can think of something.”
“I can only think of two things, neither of which is very likely to happen.” Hani’s voice was as tense as his body. He stared at his two friends accusingly as he addressed the royal wife. “Either we think of some course of action more profitable to the queen than ruining you and then find a person she trusts to convince her of that, or we somehow implore your father to make an intervention that would hold back the king’s hand.”
Keliya said gravely, “As for the second, King Tushratta has his hands more than full with the Hittites on his doorstep, I’m afraid.”
Kiya gave a hiccup of fear.
“But,” the Mitannian continued, “there was an issue of some of the agreed-upon goods from Neb-ma’at-ra never being delivered—gold statues, I think. Tushratta has tried several times, without success, to get Nefer-khepru-ra to cough them up. Could that be interpreted as nullifying the marriage?”
“More likely, nullifying the treaty. Our king would like nothing better at this point,” said Mane skeptically. “Would he surrender our lady to return to her homeland?”
“I’m afraid her infidelity just gives him grounds for not paying out whatever is still owed,” Hani said. “I don’t suppose Tushratta’d come for a state visit?”
Keliya shook his head. “Hani, he’s in the field against the Hittites as we speak. My homeland is fighting for its life.”
“Well, then. Do either of you know anyone who has the queen’s trust and would be willing to offer her an alternative to pulling Lady Kiya down?”
Mane laughed bitterly. “First, we have to come up with that alternative.”
“My point precisely.” Hani sat back, grim to the point of depression.
“Think of something, someone,” Kiya cried in desperation, her little hands clenched together.
After a long cogitative silence, Hani surged to his feet. “Every moment we sit here together, we all run an enormous risk. You know where my investigation stands, Lady Kiya. I suggest we disperse and each be thinking hard about a solution. There’s no reason to limit ourselves to my poor imagination.”
The others stood up in turn. The house had grown quite dark. Outside, crickets had begun to pulse. Keliya retreated with the Beloved Wife while Mane and Hani made their way in near darkness down to the riverbank. One of the sailors was squatting on the bank beside a small fire, and when he saw them approaching, he signaled the boat with a wave of a brand. The crew extended the gangplank, and while the sailor held it, the two diplomats clattered their way on board. Once seated, Hani felt he could breathe again.
“Please don’t involve me in this any further, my friend,” he said to Mane with a weary sigh. “I’m the target of the royal displeasure in so many ways at the moment it boggles the mind.”
“But our girl is in worse trouble still, Hani.”
“‘Beware of a woman who is a stranger,’” Hani quoted. “Did I write that after we met Taduhepa? Or after she became Kiya?”
Mane chuckled in the gathering darkness. Somewhere behind the Mountains of the West, the Lord Ra sank into a glorious pallor of rose and green.
“I’m serious,” Hani said. “I want out. Don’t call me again.”
“As you like, my friend.” After a moment, Mane added quietly, “The king will probably have her put to death if Nefert-iti tells him what happened.”
“Stop it, Mane. You have no idea how complicated my life is right now. You know, the police are looking for my brother-in-law. My whole family is in danger. I don’t need to get on the wrong side of the Great Queen.” As Hani spoke, he heard how false his rationale sounded. Mane and Keliya were certainly risking their necks as surely as Hani. He heaved an enormous sigh, and as if he’d blown it out, the sun drop
ped suddenly below the horizon.
⸎
“Hani, where were you? I thought we were going to go down to the country place this afternoon, but it’s too late now.” Nub-nefer met him at the door with a moringa-oil lamp in her hand, partly worried and partly annoyed, her great dark eyes running him up and down.
Hani put his arm around her shoulders and walked through the vestibule with her. “I’m sorry, my love. Urgent business came up. We’ll all go down together tomorrow. Does Anuia know? Is she willing to sequester herself there for a while?”
“Yes. They’ll follow in a day or two.” Nub-nefer’s lips twitched in a secretive little smile. “That will give me time to see my brother before everyone else gets there.”
“Did you get a reply from the person to whom he wrote?”
“Yes. They’ll keep him there for the time being.”
“Thanks be to all the gods. I’m afraid any property of ours is too obvious a hiding place. I’m just grateful no one’s found him before now.”
“In the boat shed?” Nub-nefer’s expression grew pained. “Poor Amen-em-hut.” Her eyes fell and grew misty. “Sometimes when we were tots, the big boys would try to pick on me—you know how they can be with little children—and he would always stand up to them. It didn’t matter that they were bigger than he. He would fight for me.” Her voice shook a little, and she took a big sniff.
Hani kissed the top of her head, which was clad only in her own long hair, radiating the scent of bergamot. “I don’t doubt it, my love. He doesn’t lack for courage.” No, it’s prudence he’s lacking, Hani thought. But then he chided himself. Not everyone has to be a silent crocodile. “We may have to disguise him to get him safely to his new place of refuge. Dress him up like a woman.” He smiled impishly.
But Nub-nefer snorted. “Hani, my dear, women don’t dress in layers of wool and veils here the way they do in your northern countries. It isn’t easy to counterfeit a woman here.”
Hani chuckled and allowed that she was undoubtedly right. To his shame, the image that sprang to his mind was that of the queen. “What has Neferet decided to do? Is she going down to the farm with you, or is she returning to Akhet-aten?”
