by Brad Geagley
But at the village walls, shielded by the dark, someone waited at the gateway. He peered closely and saw that it was Hunro, leaning indolently against the lintel. Although she had attained an age when most Egyptian women were beginning to fade, the years had made no inroads on her charms. She was not beautiful in any classic sense, being a tall, thin woman with hair bluntly cropped. But her gaze was bold, full of sordid promise, and her smile with its overbite was enticing. Though he had known hundreds of other women more beautiful than she, all of them had ultimately bored him in time. Their breasts and lips became dulled by familiarity, their movements, however artful, predictable.
But Paneb had never tired of Hunro. As they aged, their passion was revitalized by her constant inventiveness, which in turn became dangerous in its recklessness. He felt his loins stirring simply looking at her. It had been more than a month since he’d last had her. Even the memory of his aunt’s death could not diminish his mounting lust; Hunro was exactly what he needed that night to drive away the sadness and the demons.
“I should have known you’d be waiting for me,” he said, setting his tool sack on the ground.
She hooted scornfully, her voice high and feathery. “Oh? How do you know I’m not waiting for my husband?”
“Because I know Neferhotep sent a servant to tell you he’d be late.”
Her laugh was a little, liquid, gloating sound. “I hate it when I’m so obvious.”
His voice was a whisper in her ear. “You can’t help it. It’s your nature.”
In the dark her eyes flashed a warning, even as her sharp teeth flashed in her smile. “You’re a pig,” she said.
“That’s my nature.”
She laughed again, louder than before. He pressed against her. Paneb could feel the heat she radiated, and he seized her in his arms. Hunro had doused herself in a heavy sandalwood perfume, his favorite scent. He brought his mouth to hers. Her lips parted and his tongue began to probe her mouth. Abruptly she bit down hard on his lip. He pushed her away with a grunt, wincing.
“That’s for taking me for granted,” she said. “And for bringing me no gift.”
He ran his tongue over the torn flesh of his lip, tasting blood. Tempted to strike her, instead he bent down to his sack, feeling in the dark for something inside. He found what he sought, and drew forth a small object wrapped in soiled linen. “Who says I bring nothing?”
Her eyes were greedy as she reached for the thing. Quickly she undid the cloth that bound it, gasping when she saw it, for it gleamed brightly even in the dark.
“Oh… !” she breathed. “Where did you ever get it? In the bazaars of the eastern city? Have you been across the river again?”
His eyes became blank. “No,” he said. “Old Amen-meses came into camp again.”
“The merchant from Kush? It must have been dreadfully expensive.”
“Aren’t you worth it?”
Paneb slipped the bracelet on her wrist. Its weight made her dizzy, and Hunro held it up to the feeble torchlight shining from the village parapets. The thing outshone even the fires, a magnificent cuff of gold covering most of her wrist, inset with cabochon rubies that glowed brighter than freshly spilled blood. Inlaid glyphs circled it, and where the ends joined together, the talons of two vultures formed a clasp.
Even as she draped her arms around his neck, she could not take her eyes from it. Making soft sounds of joy in her throat, she took his hand and led him around the corner of the village building to the work sheds. “I must thank you properly,” she whispered.
With practiced steps they hurried to a shearing room and fell onto a pile of freshly cut wool, sinking into its softness. He roughly stripped off his kilt, and she reached to caress him, smiling to herself at finding him engorged and slick with lust. He brought his mouth again to hers, groaning aloud as she expertly kneaded him. His lip throbbed where she had bitten it, but the pain only served to inflame him further.
Then he was roughly removing her dress over her shoulders, slowly inching himself down her body, licking the small of her neck, her ears, the corner of her mouth. He would have lingered at her breasts if she’d let him, but she pushed him farther down. She arched as she felt his tongue intimately caressing her, and her eyes became slits in the dark, half-moons where no pupil showed. He bored into her, and the taste of her on his tongue was mixed with the taste of his own blood. She began to moan, to writhe, and then she groaned aloud, once, then again, trying to simultaneously push him away yet keep him there forever. At the sound of her cries he instantly climaxed, the hot stickiness of him spilling over her. Paneb quickly pulled her toward him, parting her legs so that he could finish within her. He buckled and collapsed on top of her, still thrusting, and his groans became deep, animal cries of pleasure. Then it was over, and their movements slowly ceased. They lay drenched in their own sweat and could not find the strength to part. He moved to say something tender in her ear, but was interrupted by a scratching at the door.
“Paneb!” It was a whisper that might have been the wind.
Hunro sat up. Paneb shook his head, warning her not to betray their presence. He indicated to her through gestures to remove the bracelet.
The voice was insistent. “Paneb! I know you’re in there, so don’t pretend you’re not!”
“Khepura?”
“There’s trouble!”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I’m not head woman for nothing. You come out of there, too, Hunro. Your son Rami is already home.”
Hunro let loose with a whispered string of invectives that would not have been out of place in a barracks. After wiping herself with some strands of stray wool, she seized her dress and slipped it back over her shoulders. Hunro detested the idea that Khepura was keeping accounts of her whereabouts. Reluctantly, she thrust the bracelet into the cloth that had covered it.
Khepura, the corpulent and intimidating wife of the goldsmith Sani, stood waiting for them at the door, disapproval etched into the folds of her wide, flat face.
“Look at you two,” she scolded. “Courting a trial for adultery, that’s what.”
“Go to hell, Khepura,” said Hunro, her sandy voice laced with scorn. She allowed no one to pass judgment on her, particularly this fat, ugly, overbearing woman.
“Be quiet, both of you!” Paneb snapped impatiently, still fastening his kilt around his waist. “What’s this trouble, then?”
“At your aunt’s house—”
Alarmed, Paneb ran off before she could finish speaking. “Wipe your lip, Paneb!” Khepura called after him. “It’s bleeding!”
The two women hurried in his wake as he sped through the village gates. Khepura, who considered it her duty as elected head woman to oversee the morals of the village women, kept up a steady strain of outraged commentary. “Don’t think I’m the only one who knows about you and Paneb!” she warned Hunro as they entered the village’s narrow main street.
“As if I care,” Hunro shot back, avoiding a group of shrieking children playing in the lane. Faster than Khepura, she deftly sidestepped the pack of barking dogs now streaking past them. Like an eel among the reeds she agilely wove through the groups of villagers gossiping together in doorways. Khepura, panting and wheezing, fought to keep up with her.
“You have the morals of an alley cat!” the head woman charged. “I doubt you can name the fathers of your own children!”
“I’m sure your Sani must be one of them.”
“Isis hear her!”
The two women were still arguing when they reached Hetephras’s home. Stopped from entering by Paneb’s bulky frame at the doorway, Hunro strained to peer over his shoulders into the room. Frustrated, she finally pushed him forcibly aside. Khepura thrust her bulk into the crowded room as well.
A man sat at Hetephras’s prayer bench. Though he remained silent, his incredibly black eyes glinted when he turned his gaze to Hunro. She had never seen eyes as black as his. For perhaps the first time in her life, Hunro w
as suddenly bashful, and her hands fluttered to her neck to conceal any love bites that Paneb might have left there.
“I understand why you don’t want strangers in your aunt’s home,” Semerket was patiently saying to the man with the smashed nose who loomed over him. “But the vizier sent me to discover her murderer and bring him to justice.”
Paneb’s loud threats to evict Semerket dwindled to silence. “Murderer?” he whispered, shocked. The horrified faces of the two women beside him were mirrors of his own.
Khepura stepped forward, hands fluttering. “But we had heard that… that she had perhaps drowned, or that a crocodile…?”
“She was killed with an axe.”
Paneb uttered an obscenity so foul that even Hunro blinked. He collapsed on the floor, and Hunro bent to drape her arms about his shoulders, murmuring sounds of comfort and pity.
Khepura spoke sharply to Semerket, “How do you know it was a murder?”
“I examined her body myself at the House of Purification.”
“But… but after being in the Nile for so long, how could you tell—?” Khepura shot Paneb a glance, now rocking slowly forward and back, dumb with grief.
“There is no mistake.” Semerket did not mention that he also possessed a part of the axe that had killed Hetephras; he intended to go secretly through the tomb-workers’ tool sacks himself to look for the matching blade. This was the chief reason for beginning his investigation at the village: the tomb-makers were more richly provisioned than all other laborers in Egypt. If any group possessed tools of blue metal, it would be them.
Semerket looked up to find Hunro staring at him with avid interest. Their eyes caught for just a moment, and he thought he saw in them an invitation to something more. He quickly dropped his gaze. “Tell the villagers, please,” he continued with a cough, “that I will be calling on them for their statements.”
Hunro nodded, about to speak, but Khepura interrupted her. “That’s impossible. Such a thing… it must be approved by the Council of Elders,” she said, raising her chin with a trace of defiance.
“Then I will begin with the elders. Tomorrow.”
Khepura reacted with alarm. “You’re staying overnight? In the village?”
“Yes.”
The fat woman shook her head. “No one is allowed in this village at night who is not a tomb-maker by trade—Pharaoh’s tomb is a state secret.”
“The vizier allows it, as does the Western Mayor.” Semerket held up Toh’s insignia, fastened to his neck by jasper beads.
Hunro reached forward to take the bar of etched gold between her fingers. Khepura grunted in disgust. Hunro paid her no attention, and continued fingering the vizier’s insignia. Though she could not read the glyphs inscribed upon it, she smiled up at Semerket and let it fall back to his chest with a slap.
Khepura looked nervously down at Paneb, silently willing him to say something. Paneb rose to his feet and said gruffly, “Do what you want to, then. But you can’t stay here.”
“I must, to examine the house for any clues—”
Paneb’s instant and unexpected roar of anger was so loud that neighbors came running, abandoning their dinner and gossip. He hoisted Semerket from the stone bench so swiftly that the wind was knocked from him. Flashes of light exploded in his brain as his head cracked against the mud-brick wall. Paneb’s hands were tight about his neck.
Both women flew upon the foreman, pounding on his vast shoulders with their fists, pulling at his cloak. “Paneb—let him go!”
“Paneb—no!”
“If you kill him, everyone in this village will pay the price!”
“Paneb, he is the vizier’s man!”
Semerket tore at Paneb’s hands, clawed at his face, tried to gouge his eyes. Then, with the last bit of strength he had left, he managed to pant, “Why… don’t you want me… to solve your aunt’s murder?”
That question at last penetrated Paneb’s rage. The demon glaring from his eyes suddenly fled. With a final groan of anguish, Paneb released Semerket, who fell on the floor, choking.
The foreman spoke, panting heavily, “Yes. Yes. Of course I want her murder solved.”
A querulous voice demanded entry from outside the house. The scribe Neferhotep eased his way into the room, sliding past the gawking neighbors. He was a slight man, and though still relatively young, was already hunch-shouldered from his long years as a scribe. It took only a moment for him to size up the situation. “Oh dear,” he said. “What have you done this time, Paneb?”
Paneb still panted. “Tell him—tell him he can’t stay in my aunt’s house, Nef. Tell him you forbid it.”
“Well now, I would—but who is he?”
Together Khepura and Hunro spoke. Between the two agitated women Neferhotep was apprised of the situation. His reaction to Hetephras’s death was the same as the others’. “Murder!” he said at last, as if he could not believe it.
Neferhotep bent down to help Semerket to his feet. “Please forgive us, sir. As you can imagine, we’re all devastated by this news. Paneb here was her nephew and the shock of it no doubt unhinged him—”
“I don’t want him staying here!” Paneb seemed ready to lunge again at Semerket.
“Well now, Paneb, he’s the vizier’s appointed man. If he needs to—”
“No!”
Neferhotep’s face was instantly and startlingly transformed. “Listen to me,” he said, bringing his eyes close to Paneb’s, “I don’t think you know what you’re saying. I think you’re too upset to speak intelligently. I think you’d better not say anything more, or this fine gentleman here might return to the vizier with terrible stories about our… hospitality.” Neferhotep never blinked as he spoke. “Do you understand me?”
Though Paneb’s wide mouth was a stubborn line, he dropped his head and nodded.
“Good,” said Neferhotep. “Good. Now I think you should apologize and then go to your home.”
“That’s not necessary—” Semerket began.
“I say it is. Paneb?” Neferhotep’s voice was calm.
The foreman crooked his head in the direction of Semerket, the hatred on his face plain to see. “Sorry,” he muttered, and bolted from the room. His startled neighbors were quick to jump aside as he shoved his way through the crowd and down the narrow avenue.
When he was gone Neferhotep exhaled shakily, and smiled at Semerket. “I am sorry for that,” he said. “Paneb is our foreman, and a better one you’ll never meet. But a foreman around here has to use brute force sometimes—and, well, Paneb’s approach is rather uncomplicated.”
Semerket rubbed his throat. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
Neferhotep’s tone became cajoling. “I hope you won’t hold it against us, particularly in any formal reports to the vizier.”
Semerket said nothing. Neferhotep, now all warmth, went on. “I am Neferhotep, the chief scribe and head of this village. This lady is Khepura, who I believe welcomed you here earlier. And this is my wife, Hunro.” To Semerket’s surprise he indicated the tall woman who had stared at him so audaciously.
“This lady is your wife?” Had a jackal married a lioness, Semerket could not have been more surprised.
Neferhotep’s cordial smile didn’t falter. “Yes, we’ve been married almost since we were children, though Hunro wasn’t brought up here. Please, let us know how we can make you comfortable, and how else we can be of service. I want to know we’ve done everything possible to assist you.”
“Well… I’d like something to eat, if that’s all right. I’ll pay for it, of course.”
Hunro spoke up eagerly. “Our servants here cook for the Medjays. I’m sure there are some extra rations I can bring you.” Neferhotep watched her leave with an enigmatic expression. A few seconds later Khepura too slipped quietly from the room. The scribe turned just in time to see Semerket staring after Hunro.
A shadow crossed Neferhotep’s face. “Well now,” the chief scribe said. He was looking at Semerket in the same way
he had regarded Paneb—his eyes unblinking, never wavering, never leaving Semerket’s face. When the smile returned to his face, his eyes remained cool.
HUNRO WAS RUNNING TO the kitchens. To her intense irritation, Khepura again caught up to her. Khepura spoke casually, as if discussing the previous night’s dinner. “What do you have wrapped up there in your hand?”
Hunro stopped and tossed her head. “My way out of this hole!” Defiantly she slipped the bracelet onto her wrist, smirking at the head woman.
It took all of Khepura’s resolve not to strike Hunro’s slatternly smile from her face. “You’ll bring this village to ruin with your whore’s ways. But you’d better know this, Hunro—the women here won’t let it happen. We’re all of one mind about you.”
Hunro’s lips curled into a sneer. “Judging from present company, I’m surprised they all add up to one mind.” She spoke lightly but her dark eyes were filled with malice. “What’s really bothering you, Khepura, is that you can’t abide the fact that the chief scribe is my husband, and the chief foreman’s my lover. Push me a little further and you’ll find out who the real head woman in this village is.”
“You won’t get away with it,” Khepura retorted evenly.
Hunro smiled indulgently. “You rule your way, Khepura,” she said, “I’ll rule mine.” She held her arm up to the torchlight so the bracelet could flash a defiant red, then turned to hurry toward the kitchens.
Khepura did not follow her. She had said enough. There would come a time, Khepura thought, when the gods would demonstrate their disapproval of Hunro. And Khepura silently vowed to herself that the time would be soon.
A FULL HOUR elapsed before Hunro returned to Hetephras’s house. Semerket had begun to despair of ever getting any food that night. He yawned despite his hunger, fatigued. It had been a long, disquieting day. Perhaps it would be better to go to sleep unfed and start fresh in the morning. But then Hunro was pushing open the door, bearing beer, bread, and beans.
