Year of the Hyenas

by Brad Geagley

  There was only silence. When Semerket reached the jutting corner of a crag, panting, the boy was gone.

  In his place stood a Medjay, spear lowered. His angry, red-veined eyes glared at Semerket from his black face. Semerket had no choice but to slowly raise his hands over his head.

  WESTERN MAYOR PAWERO fingered a fan of short plover feathers. He kept his face slightly averted as if loathing the idea of having to speak directly to Semerket. “You broke the law by going there,” he told Semerket, “particularly without first presenting your credentials to me. You’re lucky to be alive—the Medjays are instructed to kill intruders on sight.” Pawero condescended to level a withering glare at the Medjay standing at the back of the room, as if to accuse him of failing in his duty to see Semerket standing alive before him.

  The Medjay was blinking, heroically attempting to keep awake. Tears of fatigue oozed from his eyes. Pawero plucked at the fan, oblivious to the Medjay’s drowsiness. He continued his harangue, “If every commoner were allowed to roam—”

  Semerket held up the vizier’s insignia on the chain of jasper beads. “The vizier has granted me unrestricted access.”

  Pawero’s cold eyes barely registered the badge’s existence, but his nervous fingers continued to tear at his fan. “I shall tell Vizier Toh there cannot be two authorities here in Western Thebes. I shall tell him the harmony of Ma’at will be disturbed.”

  Semerket shrugged. “As the mayor wishes.”

  Pawero was irritated by Semerket’s indifference. Then he remembered what this Semerket had said about him, and the laughter that had risen in the vizier’s chambers when others had heard: “a pea-brained old pettifogger.”

  Flushing deeply at the memory, pulling at the fan’s feathers, the Western Mayor tried another tack. He smiled, his thin lips drawn back from his long, narrow teeth. “I’m curious, clerk, how you managed to slip past the Medjay’s tower?”

  Semerket saw panic in the Medjay’s red-veined eyes. Sleeping on duty incurred terrible punishments for the Medjays, even dismissal from service.

  Semerket quickly considered what his answer should be. “I… climbed to the high pathway above the tower, lord,” he said after a moment. “I had seen a boy—a prince—and was curious to meet him.”

  Relief visibly flooded through the Medjay’s face. But Pawero’s next words made the black policeman once again quiver in fear. “Then if this is true, Medjay Qar, under your watch two strangers have been allowed entry into the Great Place. What are we to think about this, eh?”

  The Medjay fell to his knees, hands crossed against his chest. “There was no such boy, lord. All the way from the Great Place this man told me how a prince appeared to him. Yet when I examined the trail there were no footprints other than his own. I thought he must be lying, or mad, and so I brought him here.”

  Pawero turned to Semerket with the same toothy smile. “I agree with the Medjay, clerk. You don’t know the desert as we do; it’s a mystical place, able to conjure hallucinations and mirages in naïve folk such as yourself.”

  “It was no mirage. The boy and I spoke.”

  Pawero was unused to being contradicted; his lips grew thin with suppressed rage. He fanned himself furiously, only to find himself in a shower of floating plover feathers. He threw the fan to the floor. “And what did this young ‘prince’ say to you, then?”

  “That god-skin was being made there.”

  The Medjay stood up, pointing an exasperated finger at Semerket. “I tell you there was no such boy!”

  Pawero made a slashing movement with his hand and the Medjay was silent. “God-skin?” Pawero asked, looking directly at Semerket for the first time.

  Semerket nodded.

  Pawero was momentarily taken aback and dropped his head to gaze at the floor of black basalt, considering. After a moment, he looked up. His voice was doubtful. “The skin of gods is gold,” he said. “Incorruptible. The purest material in the universe. I cannot imagine what the boy meant—god-skin, gold, cannot be ‘made.’ ”

  “At least the Lord Mayor now acknowledges the boy spoke to me.”

  Pawero bristled. “I do no such thing. It’s obvious you were merely under the desert’s spell, nothing more. You imagined this so-called ‘prince.’ ”

  Though Semerket remained silent, he radiated contempt for the mayor—for his overly elegant garments, his elaborate wig whose tiny braids were woven with droplets of gold, and most of all for his unrelenting hauteur. As far as Semerket was concerned, Pawero was the essence of the empty-headed nobleman.

  Pawero’s patience broke at last. “I am well aware of your hostility, clerk. The feeling is mutual. I know I’m just a ‘pea-brained old pettifogger’ to you—oh, yes! I know that’s what you called me, don’t deny it—”

  Semerket silently cursed his brother for having burbled that story.

  “Nevertheless,” the Western Mayor continued, “on this side of the river I make the rules, and you will do what I say.”

  “I labor for the vizier, Lord Mayor. What you command does not affect me.” Semerket’s voice was low.

  This was too much for Pawero, who rose from his chair of state. “You! You with no family to speak of—you will not talk to me this way! I shall not help you, sir. No supplies will I give you. All whom I rule will be instructed to tell you nothing. And when you die, may it be without shroud or tomb.”

  Semerket was unfazed, and the black lights in his eyes were dancing. He understood human beings well enough to realize that when Pawero threatened to inform the vizier about him, the mayor had in fact exposed his greatest fear. Semerket was quick to use the weapon. “Then I shall inform Vizier Toh I suspect you of complicity, as Mayor Paser himself does. That you must in fact be questioned more closely.”

  Medjay Qar regarded Semerket with stupefaction. This was either the bravest man he’d ever met, or insane. The Western Mayor was brother to Queen Tiya, the great wife of Pharaoh. Did the clerk understand what he risked with his unguarded tongue?

  Pawero glared at Semerket. He rose tall from his chair, his face becoming even redder than before. But he could not sustain his wrath; his expression suddenly crumpled. He sat down to perch shakily on his chair again, his rage burnt out as quickly as it had ignited. He sighed for a long time before he spoke, looking at Semerket sideways from beneath his lids, as if to gauge his effect on him.

  “Paser is wrong. This crime troubles me—you don’t know how much. He uses this case to make me look like a fool, particularly now that he’s caught my sister’s ear. Even she, the great wife, clamors for justice. Tiya is convinced catastrophe will come to us all because of this death, and urges me to make an end of it. But what am I to do?”

  Semerket looked at him evenly. “If you would solve this crime, then I must be allowed to accomplish my task without interference from you or the Medjays.”

  Another heap of sighs emanated from Pawero. He nodded. “Find who did this, clerk.” But his kohl-rimmed eyes still glowed with a tired hatred.

  Semerket bowed. As he turned to leave the room, Pawero spoke again. “Where will you go next?”

  “To the tomb-makers’ village they call the Place of Truth. I will question the old lady’s neighbors.”

  “After you have questioned them, I would know everything they tell you.”

  Semerket shook his head. “I cannot. What I learn must be a secret thing, to catch a killer.”

  Pawero considered for a long moment. Then the Western Mayor waved both Semerket and the Medjay away with a weary hand. The last Semerket saw of him he was slumped in his chair, staring at nothing.

  Through the vast, high-ceilinged halls of Djamet the two men walked. Semerket stared, never having been in a king’s residence before. The turquoise faience tiles that lined the walls were luminous in the sun’s afternoon rays, and the brightly painted pillars that supported the high ceilings were too many to count. Gold and silver glinted from hammered vases full of the last of summer’s blossoms. At the doorways and wi
ndows, fine netting flowed with the afternoon breezes, keeping the swarms of black Egyptian flies outdoors.

  Djamet was a temple devoted to the worship of Amun-Ra, it was true, but it was also the center of government for Western Thebes. Scribes, soldiers, servants, and nobles hurried about, intent on their important tasks. Honor guards formed from corps of Libyan mercenaries marched in formation, or stood at the doors to Pharaoh’s private chambers, preventing entry. Semerket was momentarily disappointed to see no women on the premises, for the beauty of Pharaoh’s wives and their maids was legendary. He had imagined a court full of pretty females, decked in flowers… sheer muslins… musky perfumes…

  “Where are Pharaoh’s women?” Semerket asked Medjay Qar. They were outside the hall of audience, well into the outer alcoves where the craftsmen and priests lived.

  “Our pharaoh is a soldier and has a horror of allowing women to meddle in the affairs of men. He confines them up there—in the harem—or in the gardens.”

  Semerket looked up to where the Medjay pointed. On an enclosed balcony, high above the ground, he saw the gauzy figures of Pharaoh’s wives peering through the window slits. The harem was the responsibility of Naia’s husband, Nakht, who because of his noble name had been appointed the steward of the king’s royal wives. Semerket shuddered, remembering their last meeting. Seeing the movements of the women behind the grating, Semerket flattered himself that he was the object of their gazes. As if to confirm this impression, faint, high-pitched laughter pursued him as he made his way under the harem’s balcony to the temple’s entrance.

  At the Great Pylons, Semerket spoke to Qar again. “It’s not true, you know, that I avoided your tower this morning. I stopped there to present myself when I went into the Great Place. Whoever was on duty was asleep; I heard the snoring.”

  He did not wait for Qar’s explanations or protests but started once again on the path that led to the Gate of Heaven. Qar, his lower lip thrust out in shame, hurried after him, saying nothing.

  As they walked the stone road to the north, Semerket asked, as if idly, “Tell me, were you Medjays on maneuvers last night in the Great Place?”

  “No.”

  “Any party of mourners… officials taking inventory? Something of that sort?”

  “No. I told you. Why do you ask?”

  Semerket had not the heart to tell Qar that not only had both Semerket and the boy trespassed into the Great Place, but at least six others had come and gone there as well.

  TENDRILS OF DISTANT CLOUDS caught the setting sun as Foreman Paneb emerged from Pharaoh’s unfinished tomb. Wearily he climbed the long flight of limestone stairs up to the tomb’s door. His team had labored there for their customary eight days and now they would pack up their gear and go home to the village for three days of rest.

  A flame flared to his left. Over in the company shed, the scribe Neferhotep was trimming the wick on a candle. It was the scribe’s custom at the end of the work period to compose a report to the vizier concerning the tomb’s progress, whether he asked for one or not. The scribe casually looked up, inadvertently glancing at Paneb. No unspoken communication was made between them, no gesture of deference or greeting uttered. Neferhotep leaned forward and pulled the curtain shut.

  The two men had never gotten along. It was ironic that now, thanks to the tomb and their high rank within the Place of Truth, they were bound together closer than brothers. Paneb admired how Neferhotep never let their current alliance stand in the way of their mutual disregard.

  Hearing his men’s footsteps on the tomb’s stairway behind him, Paneb turned to welcome their paint-splotched forms into the fading light. “Going home to that pretty wife of yours tonight, eh, Kenna? We won’t be seeing you for a day or two…. Kofi, get some sleep these next days, you’re looking tired…. Getting drunk tonight, Hori? Good man…”

  Though his words were cheerful, Paneb was not. Since the day when his aunt Hetephras was reported missing, misery had been his only companion. Nothing cheered him.

  Paneb was the foreman of Pharaoh’s tomb, a large, solid man of prodigious strength and mercurial temperament. Though by no means handsome, for his nose was smashed from fights with other foremen, his presence was mesmerizing. Paneb’s status in the Place of Truth was more like that of a folk-hero than a real person. Seeing him so unnaturally subdued caused his crew to regard one another with concerned frowns.

  Many years had passed since the “piercing,” or excavation, of the tomb had been accomplished; now the team labored on the lavish paintings of rituals and spells that covered its walls, ceilings, and galleries. Because Pharaoh Ramses III had been blessed with so long a reign, generations of village tomb-workers had lived and died without ever working on another royal tomb. These men, including Paneb, were in fact the sons of those who had started the work.

  Inside the large tent where the men slept nights, Paneb sat cross-legged, surrounded by his men. They carefully cleaned their brushes and reed pens, and sharpened their metal tools. This was a nightly chore never entrusted to servants, done even before dinner was prepared; the men’s tools were the most precious things they owned.

  The boy Rami sat closest to Paneb. Though he was the son of the scribe Neferhotep, he was a large lad, big-boned like the foreman, and shared Paneb’s gold eyes and wide, determined mouth.

  “Paneb?”

  “What is it?”

  “Have I done well with the gridding of the figures this week?” Rami was charged with creating large grids on the painted gypsum surfaces of the tomb, snapping strings imbued with red chalk into precisely measured squares. This allowed the master painters to map the designs from smaller test paintings their fathers had created on papyrus years before.

  “Yes.”

  The boy looked at him significantly. “I’m fifteen next month.”

  Paneb drew a whetstone across the blade of his chisel. “Well?”

  “Am I old enough, then, to start outlining the figures? Not the important ones, of course, but those at the edges of the tomb, or on the backs of the pillars? The ones no one will see?”

  “But you’ve no experience in it.”

  “I’ve been practicing. Here, I’ll show you!”

  Eagerly, Rami took some limestone shards from his straw knapsack. The boy had made a variety of practice strokes on them. Some of the lines tapered to fine points, some twisted into curls and circles, while still others ended in sharp, blunt edges.

  “Very impressive,” Paneb said.

  Rami beamed.

  “But these are short pen-lengths,” Paneb continued. “Can you sustain such a stroke for the span of an entire wall, to keep the reed pen steady all its length?”

  “I know I can.”

  “Can you draw, as Aaphat here can”—Paneb winked at the tomb’s master painter—“the line of a pharaoh’s lip, to catch only the hint of a smile? Or a god’s eye that peers into a world we cannot see? Or the curve of a queen’s delicate fingers grasping the stem of a lotus blossom?”

  Rami’s mouth dropped in dismay. “All I wanted was to outline a few images,” he said dolefully, “not to finish the entire tomb.”

  Paneb’s sudden yelp of laughter echoed loudly in the Great Place. It was the first time since his aunt’s death that his men had heard any mirthful sound from him. They laughed with him.

  Though Paneb had once beaten a tomb-worker to death for insubordination, his men adored him for the thoughtful kindnesses he lavished on them. They remembered the time when his team had completed a task in advance of its deadline and he’d broken into the stores for extra rations of beer and oil, heedless of Neferhotep’s protests. Another time, Paneb had traded his own copper chisels for half an oxen because he thought his team deserved it. They had trumpeted with laughter when he had requisitioned new tools the following day from the apoplectic Neferhotep.

  In fact, his men loved him as much for his prodigious faults as for his virtues. And chief of these, whether fault or virtue, was his prowess with women
. The fact that sometimes Paneb even made a conquest of their own wives did nothing to dampen the men’s loyalty; they would lay down their lives for him.

  “So you’ll let me do some outlining?” Rami continued to press the foreman.

  “We’ll see,” said Paneb, clamping his hand around the boy’s neck.

  Like any lad, Rami was convinced these words actually meant “yes,” and his wide smile was a mirror of Paneb’s own.

  Then Rami made a mistake. He dropped his head and whispered to the foreman, “I’m… I’m sorry about Hetephras, Paneb. I’ve not gotten a chance to say it.”

  It was as if a gate had suddenly slammed and locked in Paneb’s face. His eyes grew small; his wide mouth became stubborn.

  “Damn you!” he growled. “I told you men never to speak of it again, didn’t I?”

  His angry gaze raked the team so keenly they dropped their heads to stare at the sands in front of them. Still swearing, Paneb thrust his pack of tools onto his shoulders and rose abruptly to begin the journey back to the village. He strode quickly so none could catch him.

  Rami was struck senseless. He venerated Paneb, loved him better than his own father. Seeing Paneb trudge angrily down the trail caused the boy’s shoulders to sag with grief. As his treacherous eyes began to overflow, he hastily packed up the rest of his tools. Nothing had been right since the morning Hetephras had died. Nothing.

  IT WAS DARK when Paneb passed the Medjay tower where Qar was stationed. He waved to the policeman, but did not stop. He wanted no company, for he was by then chastising himself for his mean-spirited treatment of Rami. The boy had been only trying to voice the concern that all his men felt.

  Another few paces and Paneb had forgiven the lad. He would make it up to him by allowing the boy to complete a few outlining chores in the tomb. But he chose not to inform Rami of this benediction until the next day. Paneb simply hadn’t the strength to endure the lad’s glee that evening. Tired in his soul, and sad as death over his aunt’s tragic end, he was not cheered even by the welcoming smells of the village’s cooking fires.