“Bolted from inside, Your Majesty,” the guard surmised.
“Lower us,” the king ordered. “I recall a side alley gate. Go there and see if it is open.”
The soldiers moved toward the side and the entourage followed.
One man called out. “Open this gate. Attend the Great King!”
Everyone waited for footsteps, his hounds, or some tardy servant but there was nothing.
Beside herself that there had been no answer Khentie asked to be lowered. She and Bunefer quickly moved to the gate.
“Wse!” she called.
Nothing. She tensed even more, trying to remain composed and failing miserably.
“Father!” Kakai shouted in his newly deep voice that cracked at the end.
Still nothing.
Two guards investigated the last gate by the stables but soon came back on with word that it was fastened too.
Shepseskaf, now out of his chair, paced and eyed the surrounding wall. “Break the weakest gate,” he ordered; disgust in his voice.
Khentie noticed his nose wrinkling as if he smelled something too. Several shoulders began to take turns slamming in to the cedar paneling on the side door. “And if there’s a servant inside, execute him.”
“Wse!” Khentie howled once more burying her face in her hands, envisioning the old man had spirited him away to parts and possible worlds unknown with some foul curse.
She had been consoling and supporting Bunefer who had sensed something dire. Now it was the young prophetess’ turn to hold her.
Shepseskaf caught up with her and whispered to her to guard her manner. “Later, when we find him, sister,” he said.
“Shepsesi. I can’t do this anymore,” she gasped, eyeing the uncomfortable looks on Khenunu’s parents’ faces.
“Understood. Then let it out for the good of all of us, sister,” he gripped her as she began to sob loudly.
The men continuously assaulted the door, the captain of the guard calling out the rhythm for the shoulder runs, until the inner latch began to crack and give. Renewed, the men pushed harder.
“It’s deserted. He’s carried him off somewhere,” Khentie sniveled and tried to regain her bearing. “It’s traitorous to ignore this. The dead could hear it,” she muttered.
“You there. Come to your knees in the presence of Their Majesties” one of the guards called to a small clot of distant passersby; servants of other estates who had begun to gather at a respectful distance.
“Bring some of them,” Shepseskaf decided.
Guards strong-armed one man and his female companion who bowed and fell to the ground, careful to not touch anyone in the royal party. The others started to flee but were ordered by remaining guards to stand fast.
“Did you see Count Prince Hordjedtef or any householders who work this place leaving at any part of the afternoon?” the captain of the guard demanded.
“Not the Great Lord, Your Majesty,” one answered. “Miku, a serving girl, and a man I did not know left in the afternoon. They were carrying sacks of things and pulling the dogs all muzzled and growling to the docks,” the man who was watching said in a hesitant voice as if he feared his death would come soon. “I thought they might be stealing things but they said His Highness was gone and they were going to meet him at the boat.”
“So, you saw no one else?” Shepseskaf inquired, beckoning Bunefer to come forward to sense if the man was omitting anything or lying. His head whipped around.
Bunefer inched forward as if she was already reading the people the guards had confronted.
It’ll be hard for her to discern something during this chaos, Khentie thought, but was glad of Shepseskaf’s faith in her visions. She put her hand on the young woman’s shoulder to give her added stability.
“They speak the truth. They haven’t seen more, Kind Majesty. They had only come to see if there was an accident… a fire… that smell.” She kept her voice low to avoid adding to the gathering din.
Servants in distant noble houses had begun to assemble on their roofs, riveted by the drama at the gate, and the sight of the royal chairs and the king’s guard outside Count Hordjedtef’s normally quiet enclosure. Private security forces also stepped forth to offer assistance. When asked, none of them had seen or heard anything other than a couple of muzzled howls as the dogs were taken away.
The efforts of the men succeeded and the gate burst open, stopping with a smack against the supporting brick wall. The king, followed by his men bearing torches to counteract the growing darkness, poured inside.
After everyone glanced around, they chose areas of the empty house to search. All furnishings and goods were gone. No tardy servant appeared. There was only a stronger acrid stench of over-roasted meat.
“Gone? How can everything be gone?” Khentie called out, completely devoid of her trained regal bearing. She trotted into the wives’ rooms and into the private sections of the estate. All the rooms were stripped of furnishings.
“And look here,” she heard the king’s voice sound behind her in the open plaza. “Give me some light here…” then, “Filthy thieves. The boxes from Per-A-At are empty and scattered. Where’s the flint…”
A woman’s scream came from the area by the blocked back gate, and it brought all thoughts and comments to a standstill. Khenunu and her parents had gone to look there. The young princess had screamed and rushed out into the plaza followed by her mother who seemed every bit as distraught.
Fearing the worst, Khentie charged past them to the back despite their warnings: “No, Your Majesty, no… A curse!”
Kakai quickly grabbed both women and pulled them back out to the open plaza, away from whatever they had seen, without pausing to check it himself.
Despite their warnings, Khentie entered and saw the girl’s father standing, paralyzed with horror. She followed his line of sight to three twisted bodies lying in their own gore. She instantly recognized the unfortunate soldier she had sent to bring Wserkaf home. He lay still clutching his sliced open throat. Nearby, a bent and pitted bronze kopesh lay by him as if the wielder had suddenly discarded it. The overwhelming stench of burning flesh rose from the other two other lumps of former humanity; the source of the burning smell.
“No…” Khentie moaned, worried that one might have been Wse and the other Hordjedtef, their bodies abandoned in the last by the householders who had killed them and then attempted to set fire to their remains.
Shepseskaf, surrounded by his guards, moved to the back. Their torches illuminated an even stranger sight. “Khentie, Buni… I wouldn’t… go out with young Kakai.” Bunefer stopped in her tracks, but Khentie stayed.
“No, I have to know Shepsesi…” she moaned in pain. “I have seen dreadful things before…”
“It’s not him. Neither one,” the king answered, brusquely cutting her words short.
Khentie knew her brother was trying to protect her. I fainted dead away when they brought me to Our Father that night, but that was emotion. These wicked creatures I did not know. She stared and the crackled and crisped visages, stumped extremities, and red, raw and oozing matter that had once been human. Sprinkled around them were golden tubes and gray-green flat tablets as well as parchment.
“These must have been the other servants. Look, Shepsesi, here are the things they were stealing from the flint box.” Khentie stared, horrified. “That means neither Wse nor Dede could stop them. Maybe they are lying hurt somewhere! We have to find them!”
Shepseskaf straightened and called out: “Go over everything. Look in all the rooms and over the whole yard until we find them!”
The guards and a few private forces from other estates poured from outside, bowing and saluting as they passed the king who now returned to his inspection of the corpses. He bent to pick up some of the tubes while Khentie looked on. She wanted to search with the others, but was not willing to leave the grisly sight.
“Not hot or scorched. They must have killed the messenger who caught them leaving, but t
hen fire…” he paused as if he heard something.
Khentie knew she heard something, too. It sounded like deep, sardonic, and rusty laughter; as if it came from some place between the lands of the living and the dead.
“Oh, Shepsesi… I think a spirit is watching us; maybe the god who did this,” she grabbed her amulet and whispered a prayer, then asked openly again: “Where are they? Where are my consort and his teacher? I, Khentkawes, daughter of the god Menkaure, ask you.”
The source of the laughter didn’t answer her. Neither did the king. Instead, Shepseskaf went about almost absent-mindedly gathering the strewn items and replacing them in the box, which lay empty and apart from the scattered lid.
When men saw and scrambled to stop him from physical labor he cautioned: “You see me bent like a laborer at this work only because I have touched these sacred things before and lived to talk about it. You might be destroyed as these fools were. Go cover the wretches so we don’t have to look at them anymore,” he continued rescuing the contents.
“Your Majesty, shall we remove them from this house?” one of the men asked.
“Not yet. Not until I know more,” he answered then turned to Khentie, his voice terse enough to cover a reaction to the horror usually only seen in battle. “Have your eyes seen enough? Perhaps you should go to Lady Bunefer and assist her in the speaking to this laugher in the mist. Get it to say who has done this.”
“You heard it too?” she started, but her only answer was a sharp nod as the king continued gathering the scattered contents. Khentie looked right and left, desperate to look for Wse in places that were already being searched. She knew he had to be in the house, maybe trapped. As for Hordjedtef, she didn’t care. She knew the fire hadn’t been natural or even accidental.
At first, what appeared to be a fire that had blown back on men attempting to cover a murder now seemed demon-borne. As she exited the enclosure where the bodies lay, she noticed in the available torchlight that the bodies of the servants had burned, as if they had been human torches. There was no scorching on the plaster-covered walls nearby and nothing but greasy soot in a small circle that surrounded the twisted bodies. She scuffled toward Bunefer, noticing the woman looked agitated as she bobbed and paced, mouthing chants of protection near a little alcove where the old man’s altar had been.
“Buni?” she hastened and hugged the young woman, more heartsick than before. “What is it? Do you see something else? You have to tell me.”
“Khentie?” the woman looked up, her tears having made a mess of her painted eyes. “Something evil is back here at this altar. It’s big and powerful. It wants my child. I can’t see anything of Wse or Great One for having to protect her.”
“Her?” Khentie gasped, momentarily distracted. “A daughter?”
“And she will rule one day, too,” the young prophetess voice grew dull as if she almost didn’t believe it her own insight. “She will have sons.”
“Then you get out of this spot and go protect our new princess. I will confront the spirit in there. My belly is void many years. I will make it show me where Wse is,” Khentie bypassed the young woman and looked on the surface of the altar. The broken statue of Djehuti lay in a box alongside the upright statue of Ptah.
Hmm. Dede wouldn’t have left these, she lifted the broken one and remembered the cut on the elder’s hand before they went to Per-A-At. So, this really is how he cut his hand. Odd that it broke as if it could no longer tolerate his violations of the truth.
Is it not, though?
The voice with the same timbre as the spiritual laughter she’d heard echoed in her thoughts again, making her blood feel like it had turned to frost. She stood her ground and made no sudden moves with the figures she held.
“Who is this spirit addressing me? Know I am Khentkawes, daughter of…” she began but the intrusion into her thought interrupted her, a petulant tone in its voice.
…the god and reluctantly the Great Wife of her half-brother Shepseskaf.
I know your story.
I know them all.
“I demand of you your name. Be direct with me or I will banish you,” Khentie gripped her amulet harder, about to mouth another spell of protection.
Banish? You?
Khentie took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and started to speak, but Bunefer’s voice rose in a strident incantation from a few strides into the courtyard:
“Dear MaMa, MaMa Hethara protect us. Protect…”
Suddenly…
“Over here!” one of the men who had been searching at the far edge of the lotus pool cried out. Looking up, Khentie noticed men darting to a slim form lying at the edge.
“Oh, by the gods, Wse…” she almost dropped the statuettes she still held, placed them in the box, and then ran. Skirting the pool, she skidded to her knees without waiting for men to say who it was. Before she started to pull him from the edge. It was Wserkaf, his hand wet and wrinkled as if it had been trailing in the water for a long time. For an instant she thought she was too late. Then:
He’s warm. Alive, she rolled him onto his back but saw he was lying with his eyes half-open and staring vacantly.
Men in the crowd parted obediently.
Shepseskaf had joined her. “Drunk?” he asked, incredulous.
Khentie shook her head hard and would have scolded him if they had been in private. Instead, she pulled Wserkaf up into her arms, crying, kissing his face, and trying to get a response from him.
He lay senseless for long moments, then his eyes fluttered and he gasped.
One of the men found a vessel containing stale beer and brought it so she could offer it to him.
Wse struggled violently, almost pitching himself and Khentie into the pool.
She gripped him harder and listened as Shepseskaf ordered men to lift and carry him to the empty cane couch near the wall.
“This is ShepsesKhet, your king. Speak.”
Khentie grabbed him again as soon as the men deposited him and rocked him gently, stilling his struggles. The king went to one knee, his right hand splayed out over the left side of the priest’s face in a gesture of calming and healing.
“He’s not drunk, Shepsesi. This is worse,” she bent forward and sniffed at his lips to see if his breath told the tale. “It’s what they use sometimes for the soul flight, but he’s never needed that, so why would he take it?
“K… K…” Wserkaf croaked.
Khentie cradled him as he attempted to say her name. It was clear to her that he was terrified of something on one hand, but grateful on another.
“Where is Hordjedtef?” the king demanded. “Did he do this to you?”
“Wh… Hor…” Wserkaf’s eyes still failed to focus and he obviously struggled to process the questions. He shook his head several times, trying to clear it. “Here. He’s here…” he whispered, then questioned Khentie. “Naibe?”
“No, Wse. It’s me – Khentie. Don’t you recognize me?” she answered, feeling saddened, as if everything they had endured in the past months had vanished like mist if the name on his lips was that of the sojourner who had bewitched him when she was in their house. Jealous. Yes, but there’s more to it. I must listen. I must be still, she closed her eyes in attempt to force the thoughts away, but felt the distant spirit she had sensed in the elder’s chapel laughing gently. Go from me, beast, if you feel this is funny.
You are a wonder,
Oh she who sees Horus and Seth,
The voice spoke then faded.
This is a wicked distraction. Go away from me. “Grrr…” Khentie forced the laughter from her thoughts, adding a slight growl of effort.
The thought-voice continued, now syrupy and sarcastic.
Mother of two kings – of Red and Black Land,
“Stop. I refuse to hear this. Mother Hethara protect…” she spoke aloud, but through her teeth, hoping to keep whatever it was at bay.
Laughter.
Wserkaf pulled Khentie’s head down, his eyes beginning t
o clear.
“I …know… you… Khen,” his voice spoke slowly and deliberately. To Khentie he sounded as if he had forgotten his own language and was struggling to find some words he still remembered. His hands shook. She took them and gently kissed his fingertips, still stinging from the mention of Naibe’s name and the strange and taunting prophecy she was being fed by an unknown spirit.
“Naibe… here.” Wserkaf struggled.
For the briefest of instants, Khentie imagined what she remembered of the shapely young creature as having been the woman identified as Mika, dragging away muzzled and howling hounds, then discarded it. That woman wasn’t fond of dogs, especially not unfamiliar ones. She shied away from Shepsesi’s and Father’s hunting hounds.
“Wse. No, beloved, she is not here. We searched for you and found no one here but Count Hordjedtef’s wicked servants and word of a woman with them who took away his hounds.”
“She’s…” he tried again, confused. “Where is Hor…”
“Gone. Also gone,” Khentie whispered tenderly as if she was caring for a sick child.
“He. Gave me Sweet… H…” he tried, but paled and curled toward her breasts.
Sweet Horizon. It’s the same thing he gave Our Father over many years until it was too much. But how strong? her thoughts raced. He gave that to the big sojourner too and strong enough to kill maybe ten big men.
“Gone?” Wserkaf frowned, filled with more confusion. “Gone?”
Wserkaf lay drifting for what felt like hours.
Naibe, sweet one, are you still here with me? He searched his thoughts for the woman who had been impossibly there, slowly becoming aware that he lay face down on the tiles surrounding the sesen pool.
Confusion. I can’t make the thoughts stick one in front of the next. Naibe was here. I must believe that somehow, though magic, she was here and she was telling me the very sweetest things I needed to hear. I don’t know where Dede is. I asked her and she told me he was gone. I went to sleep with my head in her lap. She told me not to worry, then she was gone. A dream after all?
Heart of the Lotus Page 37
