by Lauren Haney
Chapter Sixteen
Bak sat on the bench at the back of Nebmose's villa, elbows on knees, and buried his face in his hands. His throat was sore and scratchy. A dull pain throbbed in his shoulder. He was tired, discouraged, at a loss as to where to turn next. Nenu alive might have revealed a path to the truth. Nenu dead raised a new set of difficulties.
He could not imagine why Djehuty had ordered the guard to slay him. Could he have misunderstood the dying man's meaning? No. Only a long stretch of the imagination could interpret the words in any other way. The governor wanted him dead. If the past was any indication of the future, he might never reveal the reason. So far, Bak had had no luck in prying the truth from him. How could he believe another interview would be more productive?
He would try again, and again and again if need be, but in the meantime he had to look elsewhere.
Raising his head, he stretched out his legs and leaned back against the wall, letting inactivity heal his battered body and the breeze soothe his troubled soul. He thought of all he had learned about the five deaths: Nakht, Montu, Senmut, Dedi, and Hatnofer. Each had been slain in the light of day and, with the probable exception of Dedi, slain by a horse frenzied by an unknown method, each had been killed at close range while facing, the slayer. Which meant he was someone known and trusted by all. Djehuty? No, his fear was real, attesting better to his innocence than witnesses swearing he was elsewhere at every slaying. Who else then? All who held lofty positions in the villa would have been trusted. If Nenu was to be believed, and Bak did believe him, he had had nothing to do with the murders. He had known he was dying, and with his heart so soon to be weighed against the feather of truth, he dared not lie. Amonhotep, Simut, and Antef had each been far away during the time of at least one slaying, but the whereabouts of the others remained unknown. He had been lax in that respect, allowing himself to be distracted when he should have followed through to the end. This he vowed to do.
The tie that had bound the victims together had been the fateful storm five years earlier. Other than Amonhotep, who had wandered the burning sands alone, all the survivors had behaved in a despicable fashion. Bak thought a moment, revised the notion. The survivors who had sheltered in the cave with User had behaved abominably. Djehuty and Min had not been among them. They had been elsewhere, no one knowing where or what they had done to survive. This, Bak felt certain, was the key to the governor's secret.
Sergeant Min was gone, probably slain, his lips sealed forever. He may have confided in his friend Senmut or, more likely, in mistress Hatnofer, his lover. They, too, were dead. Djehuty alone could offer enlightenment, and he refused to speak.
Is that all I've learned in close on a week? Bak asked himself. Am I no nearer to the slayer today than I was yesterday or the day before or the day before that? How can I hope to save Djehuty in less than two days if 1 can uncover no new answers?
A thought reared its ugly head, one so unworthy he squashed it like ft insect: the southernmost province of Kemet would be a better place to live if its present governor were dead.
Frustrated, he stood up and strode to the stable. An orange cat lay stretched across the doorway in the sun, washing its face. He stepped over the creature and walked inside. The structure was as devoid of life as when last he had seen it, with a few bits of straw and the faint scent of manure to remind him of its proper function. He envied Nebmosewhoever he had been-and he well understood Ineni's resentment at not being allowed to keep horses here. Djehuty's decision to bar animals from the stable and reserve the house for illustrious guests seemed odd. Why had he not given the property to his married son and daughter?
Bak left the stable and, driven by curiosity more than purpose, entered the house. Passing the rooms used for storage, he walked through the high-ceilinged, bright-painted hall and down the corridor to the master's suite, his footsteps loud in the silence. He glanced around the private reception room with its elegant furnishings, decorative wall hangings, and senet game ready for play. He peered into the two small bedchambers, noting the neatly folded sleeping pallets, and ambled around the larger bedchamber that led to the bath where Hatnofer had been slain. Here, the bed was made and toilet articles laid out. A bowl of dried flowers sat on a wooden chest. Not a speck of dust marred any surface. If not for the silence, he might have thought these rooms inhabited. By rights, Khawet and Ineni should have occupied them, filling them with laughter and children, instead of a series of noted guests who passed through in haste.
He strode to the doorway, intending to leave, but his steps faltered at the threshold. Troubled, not sure why, he turned around to study the room. It looked much as it had when first he had seen it, a guest chamber ready for occupancy. But he, the intended guest, had spurned the room, and no other visitor was expected. Why were the linens still in place when normally they would be stowed away, protected from dust, insects, intruding birds, and small animals? — Khawet must have forgotten. She had proven herself a superb mistress of a demanding household. She surely could be forgiven this one lapse.
A new thought came to him, a fresh possibility. One he swept aside as nonsense. Another idea loomed larger, more promising. Vowing to return to the first notion if need be, he left the bedchamber and wandered throughout the house, seeing the building as the hollow shell it was, getting a sense of the comfortable home it once had been.
What had prompted Djehuty to take the life from this dwelling? Had he loved Nebmose like a brother, or had he hated him? Who, in fact, was Nebmose? Other than that he was a descendent of an old and noble family, Bak knew nothing of him. Nothing except the fact that he had left behind a desirable residence on a valuable piece of property and farmland on the north end of the island that was probably of even greater value than this dwelling.
Bak peered inside woven reed chests, pulled drawers out of wooden chests, looked through the few objects kept in a storeroom in the master's suite, mostly bedding and toilet articles. He found no documents anywhere, nothing that revealed in any way the former owner. A rapid search through the rest of the house proved equally fruitless. If any of the deceased nobleman's possessions remained, he could not distinguish them from those of the governor's household.
Unbarring the front door, he walked out onto the porch. Midway along the path to the gate, the family shrine stood among well-tended trees and flower beds offering a riot of color. Like the house, the building and surrounding garden looked a product of constant care and loving attention.
He plunged down the stairs, hurried along the path to the shrine, and climbed the four steps to the columned entryway. Inside stood the ancestor bust, sitting atop the limestone plinth. Like most such images, the inscription down the front contained no name. Before the bust, blue lilies floated in a low, wide-mouthed bronze bowl, their scent delicate, evasive in the light breeze.
Someone-Amonhotep, Bak thought-had told him that Nebmose had died leaving no living relatives and Djehuty had taken the villa in the name of their sovereign Maatkare Hatshepsut. If no one remained, who was tending this shrine with such devotion? A distant relative, one who should have inherited the property upon Nebmose's death? A forgotten concubine or lover? Or merely a faithful servant?
If a relative had surfaced, he would have had every right to resent Djehuty's grasping the property as his own. The land and the dwelling, located in crowded Abu, would have been a legacy well worth slaying for, as would the farmland north of the city. Amethu would know. As steward of Djehuty's household, he was responsible for all transactions conducted by the governor. As a long-time resident of Abu, he would have been acquainted with Nebmose and his family.
A sudden thought dampened Bak's enthusiasm for the theory. A long-forgotten relative of Nebmose might slay Djehuty to regain his property, but would he slay five innocent people? Also, what were the odds that those five people would all be bound together by a deadly sandstorm?
He muttered an oath. Nothing ever seemed to fit in a nice, neat package. As he had told Psuro and
Kasaya that very morning, something was missing, a crucial fact he had yet to discover.
He eyed the bust, wishing it could speak. It stared back, enigmatic. He had to smile. Whatever secrets it held, it fully intended to keep them to itself.
Bak tracked Amethu down at the mansion of the lord Khnum. He found the steward in the outer, colonnade court, kneeling before the blocky stone image of a nobleman seated with his knees beneath his chin, a scroll spread across them, displaying through eternity his ability to read and write. A long-dead official of Abu, Bak assumed, one of many whose statues occupied the court, left in the expectation that the deceased would forever be remembered and honored. Food, drink, and other good things offered to the lord Khnurn were reoffered to these lesser images before the priests took possession for their own use.
Fairly certain the prayer would be brief, Bak backed away, allowing privacy, and left the temple to wait in the shade of the willow trees outside the pylon gate.
Amethu must have seen him in the court, for he soon bustled out, looking to his right and left. "Ah, there you are." Reaching the leafy shelter, he eyed the officer's bandaged upper body and arm, his bruised neck. "I must say, Lieutenant, you don't look at all well."
Bak gave him a wry smile. "So I've been told." "The one you fought is dead, I hear." "Unfortunate but true."
Amethu gestured toward a mudbrick bench under the drooping branches. "Do you mind if we talk out here? I can't bear to return so soon to the governor's villa. We've done with the inventory-I thank the lord Khnum-but the atmosphere inside those walls is so oppressive it's hard to breathe."
"The privacy suits me, and the quiet."
The steward brushed leaves off the bench, hiked up his ankle-length kilt, and plopped down. "Ahhhh. Good, clean air, with no stench of fear."
Bak sat down beside him. "I've much compassion for Lieutenant Amonhotep and mistress Khawet, but those in the household banned from the governor's private rooms appear to be functioning in a reasonably normal manner."
"You've made it clear you believe Djehuty's the target of this madman, and it's obvious he agrees. The guards are jumpy-as they should be. The servants, while spending an excess of time whispering among themselves and peering over their shoulders, are carrying on quite well, all things considered. They'd feel better with you and your men in the house, but they know of Khawet's ban."
Bak's voice turned flinty. "Ban or not, we'll be there on the crucial tenth day. I'll not let Djehuty die to satisfy the whim of a dictatorial woman."
Amethu chuckled. "Best you don't call her a tyrant to her face. She prides herself on her kind and considerate manner."
"Don't get me wrong. She has every right to be shorttempered. But at times she seems as irrational as her fatherand as stubborn."
"I've never known her to be this difficult." The steward brushed a fly off his bald head. "I've urged her to allow a servant to care for Djehuty while he's ill. She refuses, insisting that no one else can satisfy him. And I've selected a capable and responsible woman who could easily step into Hatnofer's sandals, performing the duties of housekeeper. Again Khawet has refused."
Bak gave him a sympathetic smile. "Perhaps when I lay hands on the slayer, your load will be lighter and so will hers."
"I pray you're right." Amethu gave him a sharp look. "Are you closing on him?"
"Sometimes I feel I'm so close I can almost smell him. At other times, I doubt I'll ever lay hands on him."
"In other words, you haven't the slightest idea who he is."
Nettled by so bald an assessment, Bak glared at the river flowing along the base of the terrace. Three small boats raced upstream, their sails swollen with the morning breeze. Across the channel, near where Nenu had died, four women knelt at the water's edge, washing linen and spreading the objects over the bushes to dry.
"Four of the five deaths occurred before I came to Abu," he said, waving off a yellow butterfly. "Can you remember where you were at the time those lives were taken?"
The steward's head snapped around. "I resent the insinuation, Lieutenant!"
Bak formed the most amiable smile he could manage. "I've more or less admitted I'm desperate. Will you not humor me?"
"Humph!" Amethu searched his face. Evidently convinced Bak fully intended to get what he sought, he offered a tight smile. "Oh, all right! I was in the governor's villa, where I spend all my days. I've no special memory of what I was doing or who I was with except…" He hesitated, cleared a throat that did not need clearing. "Well, except for the time Lieutenant Dedi was slain. But let me assure you: I've taken no lives."
"If all were slain by a single man, as I believe, the one accounting will do."
The steward's eyes fell away; he made a pleat in the skirt of his kilt and another and another, busying himself with minutiae. "This isn't the easiest tale to tell. You see, in a sense I'm responsible for that young officer's death."
"You?" Bak asked, not sure he understood.
"That morning, I summoned the servant who tends the animals. His accounts were chaotic-his mathematical skills are close to nonexistent-and we spent several hours going over them, sorting them out. When he returned to the stable, he found the young man dead. If I'd not kept him so long… Well, you can imagine how I felt. How I still feel."
"Lieutenant Dedi was meant to die, Amethu." Bak laid a sympathetic hand on the steward's wrist. "If you hadn't eased the slayer's path, he'd've found another way."
"So I've told myself."
Bak let the matter rest, aware that words alone could heal no open sore. If Amethu was the man he thought he was, time and a will to forget would soothe his conscience. "What can you tell me of Nebmose, the man who dwelt in the villa next to Djehuty's?"
"Nebmose?" Amethu released the pleats in his kilt and glanced up. "You are reaching far afield, aren't you?" Bak ignored the jibe. "I walked through the house and grounds this morning and was struck by their value. It occurred to me that Nebmose might've had some distant relative, one whose relationship is unknown to all who dwell in Abu, a man seething with resentment at having his birthright confiscated."
"No, no, no." Amethu shook his head vehemently. "Nebmose had no living relatives, close or distant. That I know for a fact."
"How can you be so sure? I've lain with women I've told no one about. Might not he or his father or his father's father have done the same, creating a child at the time?"
"You don't understand." The steward wiggled around on the bench to face Bak, the better to make sure he got his message across. "Nebmose was his father's only child, and his father was his father's only child, and so it had been for at least six generations. That was their curse. Somewhere in the distant past, the gods had willed that each man in that family would have only one child-one boy. No girls were ever born, no second sons."
Bak frowned, skeptical.
The steward read the look on his face and turned indignant. "I knew Nebmose's father well, Lieutenant. We studied together in the scribal school at the governor's villa. And my father knew his, studying with him a generation earlier."
"I can't believe none of Nebmose's ancestors had concubines."
"None who conceived, but…" Amethu hesitated, scowled. "I've heard tales… Well, who knows how true they are? They're told in the servants' quarters and enter the homes of respectable men and women through the back door. They say that pretty servant girls in Nebmose's villa have, in past generations, given birth to babies born deformed, sad little creatures fortunate to die within an instant of seeing the light of day."
Bak found the tale difficult to believe, the curse superstitious nonsense. But the steward, he felt sure, was not a man to pass on information containing no grain of truth. If only my father were in Abu, Bak thought; as a physician, he would know if such a thing were possible.
A new thought struck. "You grew to manhood with Nebmose's father?"
Amethu nodded. "A good man, he was, one I valued as a friend. All who knew him loved and respected him. No malfor
med babies were born to his servants, I can tell you. His one and only son, Nebmose, was as fine a man as his sire."
Bak stood up and walked to the edge of-the shade, giving himself time to absorb the news. Throughout his stay in Abu, he had assumed Nebmose to be Djehuty's age. Never had he thought him a young man. Walking back to the bench, he asked, "How'old was Nebmose when he died?"
"He'd just celebrated his twentieth year." "How long ago?"
Amethu drew his head back, surprised. "Has no one told you? He was an officer in the garrison. A lieutenant. One of the many fine young men — who died in that frightful sandstorm five years ago. The storm in which you've shown so much interest."
"By the beard of Amon!" Bak was staggered. He had been looking at that house for eight long days, walking its grounds, taking it for granted. Could he, after so much time, have stumbled upon the right path at last? "Was anyoneanyone at all who toils in the governor's household-related in even the most remote fashion to Nebmose?"
"Simut." Amethu spoke as if he could hardly credit Bak's lack of knowledge. "He was Nebmose's uncle."
Bak eyed the steward warily. Simut's name was the last he had expected to hear, the relationship hard to believe. "Did you not just tell me Nebmose had no relatives?"
Amethu waved off the objection as if of no significance. "Simut was no blood relative and had no right to the property. His wife's sister was wed to Nebmose's father, and she died long before her husband. He didn't tell you? I'm astonished. He thought of the boy as one of his own."
Bak recalled the chief scribe mentioning a nephew lost in the storm, a youth as close to him as a son. Which might explain the offerings left in Nebmose's family shrine. But would it account for the unusual care given the interior of the house and the garden in which the shrine stood? Bak's thoughts leaped back to the possibility that had occurred to him earlier-a notion he had rejected without due consideration. If that idea had any merit at, all, and now he was inclined to think it might, the donor was another individual altogether.
