Year of the Hyenas

by Brad Geagley

  It was Semerket who reached down to retrieve the object. The loop was of gold, an immense and gaudy jewel from a previous dynasty. All around its hammered edge cabochon rubies were inset, a thing of sunlight and blood.

  “I AM TO BLAME,” said Qar dismally.

  High up in the Medjay’s tower, he and Semerket ate the dinner brought them by the village servants. The herbs the tomb-makers used were not so sharp that evening, Semerket noted—or else he was getting used to their pungency.

  Semerket raised the jar of beer to his lips. “You don’t know for certain anything has been stolen.”

  “The jewel—”

  “It could have been there for centuries.”

  Qar said nothing, as if considering this explanation for the first time. Semerket chewed some dates. “Even if not, how is it your fault?”

  Deeply ashamed, Qar coughed, and began tentatively, “That day you came here—?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was asleep.”

  Semerket said nothing. He had known.

  “This post,” Qar continued, “I’m getting too old for it. I’m so tired it’s all I can do just to strap on my armor anymore. I tell you, I allowed these robbers to slip into the valley.”

  Qar’s was a difficult confession to make, Semerket knew. No one, man or woman, wanted to admit they had passed their prime. In Qar’s case the admission brought with it the knowledge that perhaps his feebleness had allowed a great crime to occur.

  Qar went on, not finished with confessions. “And that morning Hetephras went into the hills—the last morning anyone saw her alive?”

  “What about it?”

  “I slept through that, too. Usually I would check on her during my rounds. That morning I didn’t even know she’d come and gone.” His voice was very sad.

  Semerket let out a long sigh. “What are you going to do?”

  Qar considered his answer. “I’ll meet with the other Medjays and show them the site you found, and the jewel. Then I’ll resign my post. If I’m lucky, I’ll get reassigned to some quiet town on the Nile. Who knows?”

  Semerket was skeptical. “Why confess to something you don’t even know is occurring? What is there, really, to prove a tomb robbery has happened? A few pieces of crumbling charcoal. An earring. Some limestone chips…”

  “We’ll have to examine all the tombs and make a list of their contents.”

  “That will take years.”

  “We’ll send notice to the Medjays in Eastern Thebes, then, to raid the bazaars. If royal treasure pieces are for sale there, then we’ll know there’s been a robbery.”

  Semerket shook his head. “The minute you Medjays appear in the marketplace, any suspicious goods will get tucked neatly away into sacks of grain or vats of olives. You’ll never find them.”

  “What else can we do?”

  Semerket thought. “Send someone into the bazaars as an interested buyer. Someone whom the dealers would never suspect. Have him buy a piece—it should be proof enough.”

  “Who could do this?”

  Semerket thought for a moment. Then he answered slowly, “I may know someone.” He grimly smiled to himself. He owed his brother something for getting him this position. It would serve Nenry right.

  Semerket then recalled the shards of broken pottery he’d collected at the phantom campsite. For some reason, one that he could not even explain to himself, he did not tell Qar of them. Though he and the Medjay regarded one another more amiably since their trek from the valley that first day, they were not yet friends. Let trust come later, he thought.

  “Something disturbs me about all this, Qar. Did you ever stop to think that perhaps you’re not the only one sleeping on duty?” Semerket asked.

  “What?”

  “If tomb robbers are afoot,” Semerket said, “why didn’t the other Medjays hear them digging during the night? Why didn’t they know that I had come into the Great Place the other day? And how is it you alone woke to find me?”

  Qar was uneasy, and spoke unwillingly. “A dream woke me—a terrible one. A lioness stalked me. The dream seemed so real I could even smell her—the blood on her breath, her scent. I truly thought I was going to die in her claws…”

  It was not the chill desert air that caused Semerket to shiver then.

  “And as she sprang,” he asked in a soft voice, “did you wake and say the prayer to Isis for nightmares?”

  It was Qar’s turn to look amazed.

  To Toh, Vizier of the Two Lands, life! health! prosperity! under PharaohRamses III, life! health! prosperity! From Semerket, clerk of Investigations and Secrets, Greetings…

  Report to the Great Lord in the case of Hetephras, high priestess in thePlace of Truth; This is what I have discovered—

  Quickly Semerket wrote of how he had learned in the House of Purification that Hetephras had indeed been murdered, on dry land. He did not tell the vizier that he possessed a piece of the axe that had killed her, for he had no way of knowing who else read his reports. Semerket laid down his reed pen and considered what to tell Toh next. He sat cross-legged on the floor of Hetephras’s reception room, Sukis’s prone form sleeping next to him, a single tallow candle serving as light. Earlier, he had bought a roll of papyrus from Neferhotep, some new reed pens, and a pot of lamp-black mixed with gum for ink. Now the paper was unrolled before him, the ink watered, and he had chewed the reed pen to the exact point he preferred.

  Semerket trimmed the wick of his candle, and picked up the pen again.

  From the Council of Elders here at the tomb-makers’ village I have learned that the priestess was semi-blind and that she often went alone to attend the local shrines, even in her debilitated state, and often for a stretch of several days. This happened so frequently, the elders say, that no one thought to report her missing.

  His thoughts turned to his own reception by the villagers, and how they seemed more concerned about his right to question them than about actually determining who had killed their priestess. Semerket weighed the possibilities. Perhaps Hetephras had been resented in her village, a crone who had unwittingly engineered her own demise with a cruel tongue. But this did not jibe with the image of the pious mother Queen Tiya remembered. Yet again, he could not write of that impression, because it was not a proven fact.

  The image of the large and intimidating foreman Paneb loomed in Semerket’s mind. Despite his attack on Semerket, Paneb was the only one of these odd tomb-makers whose behavior was comprehensible. Paneb and his aunt must have been close indeed for him to disintegrate so completely upon learning the truth of her death—but Semerket could not write down such a supposition for Toh to read.

  Semerket’s hand went unwillingly to the bruises on his throat, remembering the thickness of Paneb’s fingers there. The same nagging thought picked at his mind: why would the foreman, like the elders, be opposed to finding the killer of his aunt? It simply made no sense, unless—

  Semerket sat up, staring into the dark.

  Unless Paneb was—unless they all were—protecting the person who had committed the crime.

  Moments later, Semerket found himself striding restlessly around Hetephras’s home, his letter to Toh abandoned, his mind ablaze. Conspiracies were everywhere. He despaired that he would ever find his way out of the mare’s nests of possibilities. And now this other mystery had come, more disturbing than all the rest—why was the Medjay Qar dreaming of the lioness?

  Perhaps it meant nothing, the lioness being only an apt symbol for the tension he and Qar both felt in their day-to-day lives. Semerket stopped his pacing, and sighed. He wrapped himself in Hetephras’s light skins, for the desert air was cool.

  A scratching on the priestess’s door took him unaware. The tallow candle lit his way to the front room.

  Hunro waited in the street for him. She was arrayed as he’d never before seen a woman dare clothe herself. Her sleek shift was dyed the radiant color of pomegranate, a color reserved for gods and goddesses. Her hair was spangled with
flecks of gilded wax. Her face was painted like those of the goddesses in temples, her eyes extended by antimony and malachite, and on her cheeks she had daubed circles of ochre. The heavy scent of sandalwood enveloped him.

  Semerket’s tongue instantly cleft to his mouth, refusing to move.

  “Let me in and close the door,” she said impatiently. “Or the neighbors will gossip.”

  Instead of doing as she said, Semerket pushed the door open even wider so that all could see inside.

  Hunro smiled defiantly and walked past him into Hetephras’s front room. “Can it be you’re afraid of me?”

  Semerket nodded.

  Hunro affected a little moue of hurt. “It doesn’t please a woman to hear she frightens a man, because then that thing beneath his loincloth becomes shriveled and useless.”

  She drew nearer to him, but he backed away again. “I fear your husband, as well,” he said.

  “Neferhotep?” Hunro chortled. “Don’t fear a mouse—rather fear the lion, Paneb.” His expression once again made her roll her eyes in exasperation. “How do you think we amuse ourselves in this dreary little place? If it weren’t for the sin of adultery, we’d all go mad.”

  “You more than most, I think.”

  Her high, sandy voice was laced with defiance. “I’m an honest woman in that respect—more than most, I think.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “I came to tell you,” she said with a sigh, “that the elders have agreed to allow you to question the villagers. You can begin whenever you like.”

  He looked at her with skepticism. “And you came here to tell me, dressed like that?”

  Her brow was knitted with hurt, and her voice was like a small feather. “What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed? Most men find me beautiful when I robe myself like a goddess. Don’t you?”

  Again his tongue became unusable, and he only nodded.

  Cooing a little trill, she pressed herself against him. Despite the cool night air, he began to sweat. “If you think me so beautiful, why don’t you make love to me then?” she asked, and sought his lips with hers. They kissed for how long Semerket did not know. He was surprised to find himself so aroused. Summoning all his resolve, however, he firmly pushed her away.

  The gold in her hair shimmered as she shook her head in disbelief. After a time she said to him, “If you will not have my body, then—for I am obviously only a withered and ugly hag to you—what about my mind?”

  “What about it?”

  “What if I told you I know things?”

  He blinked. “About…?”

  “About this place, its secrets.”

  “If you do know something, it’s your duty to tell it officially, for the record.”

  She laughed again, amused by his naïveté. “Others around here might have a different idea about what my duty is.”

  “Tell it for Hetephras’s sake then, for the old woman that everyone seems to have forgotten.”

  At the mention of the old priestess’s name, Hunro’s painted mouth became a gash in her face. “It’s true she was kind to me, about the only woman around here who was. And I’m not the sort who forgets her friends, despite what people may say.” Semerket was amazed at how quickly Hunro changed when the spark of desire was not in her. She seemed suddenly old and defeated, the paint on her face becoming caked and cracked. “But since I never give away my favors for nothing, I will tell you this, and put it on account.”

  She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “Do you know why the elders needed two days of ‘deliberation’ before you could question the others?”

  “Because of your tradition of debating the issue—”

  She laughed. “There is no such tradition. But that’s all I will say, Semerket. Unless…”

  He took a step nearer. “Unless… what?”

  “I am wealthy,” she said urgently. “From gifts I made the men give me to sleep with them—every one a stone to make a bridge across the river. Take me there. I don’t know the city; you do. You’ll never want for anything again, I promise. We can live in luxury there. And I’ll give you love like you’ve never known it before—” She would have brought her lips again to his, but he moved aside, staring into the dark.

  “Look elsewhere, Hunro,” he said. “Luxury has no appeal for me. And I would never take a man’s wife from him, for I know the other side of it.”

  Hunro stared at him. “What a fool you are. I could drive that wife of yours from your mind. I could turn your skin to ashes if I wanted. And I could make you a rich man in the doing of it.” She pushed open the door, looked back at him, and then walked swiftly down the alley.

  That night on his pallet he could not rid himself of the memory of her words. But it was not the tantalizing hints and clues she’d given him regarding the tomb-makers that kept him awake. He remembered only the press of her flesh against him, the curve of her belly and the feel of her breasts. He thrashed about in misery for long minutes in the dark, and in the end resorted to that solitary gesture by which Atum begat the entire world.

  IT WAS NEAR DAWN when he heard a whisper at Hetephras’s door. “Semerket!”

  Qar, waiting for him in the avenue, put a finger to his lips. When they had taken themselves inside, away from the street and from those who might hear them, Qar said quietly, “I’ve just come from a secret meeting of the Medjays.”

  Semerket nodded, waiting.

  “I told them of my sleeping sickness.” Instead of being desolate, he was smiling. Sukis leapt to the Medjay’s lap, and he stroked the cat idly. “What do you think? It only needed my confession for the others to admit they suffer from it as well. Always on the same nights—when there is no moon.”

  “How is that possible?” Semerket asked.

  “Can’t you guess? Someone drugs our food,” Qar said balefully. “It would be easy. Our meals are all prepared in the village kitchens by the servants, and then brought to us individually. Anyone could do it.”

  Semerket’s eyes widened and he bent close to Qar, whispering, “But for what gain?”

  Qar exhaled in a great, sad gust. Irritated, Sukis jumped from his lap to the tiles and headed to the kitchen, hopeful for mice. “What better time to rob a tomb than when the Medjays are sleeping? What better night than when no moon lights the Great Place?”

  Semerket considered, and then said aloud, “‘Where the god-skin is made… when Khons hides his face.’”

  Qar looked at him. “What are you saying?”

  “It’s what the boy told me there in the Great Place, remember? The prince you said didn’t exist. He spoke of gold being made when there was no moon.”

  Qar shook his head. “It still doesn’t make sense. You can mine gold. Hammer it. Grind it into dust if you want. But you can’t make it.” Then in the dark he inhaled sharply. “But you can re-make it…”

  Semerket shook his head, not understanding.

  “Long ago,” Qar explained quickly, “a series of tombs in the Place of Beauty were robbed. The thieves didn’t need to disturb the seals on the tombs’ doors—they dug straight into the queens’ tombs, from the top, then burned it all. When the flames died, all they had to do was gather the pools of melted gold from beneath the ashes. That’s how we caught them—melting the bigger pieces in a jar.”

  At that, Semerket remembered the shards of broken pottery wrapped in his cape, the blackened pieces shattered by fire—and the traceries of gold in their cracks. He had believed the gilding to be some kind of design, or writing, but if what Qar believed was true, its meaning could be far more sinister.

  “We’ve agreed that on any given night one of us Medjays will not eat,” Qar was saying. “He’ll raise the alarm if he sees anyone suspicious go into the Great Place. Obviously, someone from the village is behind it.”

  “Who?”

  Qar shook his head. They pondered for a few moments in silence. Then the Medjay spoke. “What I’ve really come here to ask is this—can you have that person
you mentioned begin to search the bazaars for royal jewels?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good man,” Qar said. He walked back toward the night-shrouded alley. “And Semerket—be careful what you eat. Your food, too, is prepared in the kitchens. The Medjays agreed that it’s only a tiny step from making us sleep the night to making us sleep forever.”

  Semerket felt his scalp tingle.

  “One thing more…” Qar’s voice was suddenly hesitant, and he sighed again before he spoke. “We dream of lions. All of us.”

  Noiselessly Qar closed the door behind him.

  SNEFERU LOOKED UP from his potter’s wheel. Semerket loomed in the doorway with a heavy bundle, which he placed on the ground. Like many of the other artists, Sneferu used a makeshift wooden shed at the village’s northern gate as a workshop. It was located next to the cistern where the donkey train unloaded the village’s daily supply of water, sparing Sneferu from having to tote heavy jars back and forth from the cistern to his home.

  Sneferu let his wheel slow, and squeezed a dripping sponge over the half-formed bowl that was spinning on it. From experience he knew that visits from Semerket were long and arduous, and that the bowl must be kept moist.

  “Semerket, good friend,” Sneferu attempted a cheery tone, “why have you come here? Have you decided that I murdered Hetephras?”

  With a grunt Semerket untied the ends of the woolen sack and up-ended it. Fragments of charred black pottery spilled out in a heap, the ones he had found in the abandoned campsite in the Great Place.

  “I’ve broken this jar that belonged to Hetephras.”

  “Hetephras? I don’t recall her owning any such—”

  “Can you fix it? I don’t wish to offend her spirit.”

  Sneferu nodded. “If all the pieces are there, yes, I can mend it for you.”

  “I thought it would be best to bring it to you, as you probably made it…?” If Sneferu replied affirmatively, then Semerket would know that the campsite had been attended by someone from the village, that the pieces were not from some ancient fire kindled centuries before.

  But Sneferu shook his head. “Perhaps when it’s together again, I’ll be able to tell.”