Murder at the Feast of Rejoicing

by Lynda S. Robinson

  “O great king, ruler of Egypt,” Mugallu said, his voice echoing in the empty heights of the throne room. “Thus speaks tabarna Suppiluliumas, the great king, king of Hatti, son of Tadhaliyas, great king of Hatti, son of Armuwandas, descendant of Hattusilis, king of Kussara.”

  The emissary lifted his arms. He assumed an aggrieved expression, which sat ill with his pugnacious features, especially the eagle’s-beak nose. “Why does the king, my brother, Nebkheprure Tutankhamun, accuse me of destroying his vassals? Are not his friends my friends, and his enemies my enemies? Someone has spoken falsely to the king my brother, for my heart is pure, my deeds clean of evil.”

  Mugallu lowered his arms and took a step toward Tutankhamun. He smiled at pharaoh as if he were a naughty but amusing puppy. A murmur rose up from the officials behind Ay, but Meren kept his gaze on the king. Tutankhamun’s blank expression had vanished. His large dark eyes could look bruised and filled with the grief of the world, but now they ignited with the flames of the lakes of fire in the netherworld. Meren quickly stepped to Ay’s side, caught the older man’s gaze, and looked up at pharaoh.

  “Do something,” Meren whispered.

  Ay muttered, “You know I can’t.”

  Having failed to gain a response from his royal victim, Mugallu resumed his speech. “Thus says the tabarna Suppiluliumas, the great king, king of Hatti. The king, my brother, is young, like a colt among stallions in the treacherous, snow-shrouded mountains. Let not my brother lend his ear to evil-sayers.” Mugallu paused to swagger to the front right corner of the dais, near Karoya, where he put his fists on his hips and continued.

  “Thus says the king of Hatti. Never do I attack a prince in his city without just cause. In Syria certain carrion-eaters have given refuge to Hittite traitors and refused to send them back to me. I have a right to pursue traitors and those who harbor them. But such small doings need not concern my younger brother. For as men love the sun and a green mountain valley, so I love my brother. Whosoever has mouthed words of evil into thy majesty’s ear, let him be cast out of thy presence, forced into the desert to die. Let him be carrion to hyenas—”

  There was a sudden movement on the dais. Mugallu stopped in midsentence, his mouth open, as the youth he’d been addressing thrust himself up from the throne. At the same time, a wave of movement traveled over the vast audience hall. Karoya and his royal bodyguards took one step forward and banged their gold-tipped spears on the floor with a crack that made Mugallu jump and stare at those around him. Minister, princes, foreign ambassadors, and nobles dropped to their knees, foreheads touching the floor.

  As Meren sank to the ground, he turned his head to the side to glimpse the king. Tutankhamun was breathing hard and glaring at Mugallu. With jerking movements he thrust out the gold-and-lapis flail scepter and pointed at the gaping emissary.

  “You dare address my majesty as a master chastises an apprentice?” Although he was only fourteen, pharaoh’s voice boomed with the force of royal indignation. “My majesty knows from whence comes the evil and treachery that plague my empire to the north.”

  Meren held his breath, afraid that the king would reveal exactly how he knew the source of treachery.

  “The king of Hatti, my brother, is ill served by so insolent an emissary.”

  Meren let out his breath.

  Tutankhamun lowered his arm. Thick gold bracelets jangled when he jabbed at Mugallu again, putting a gold-sandaled foot forward. “My majesty may be young, but I am the living god, lord of Egypt, son of Amunhotep the Magnificent, descendant of Thutmose the Conqueror. My majesty’s ancestors ruled this empire when yours were herding goats in your precious mountains. I will hear no more bleating of colts and carrion.

  “Karoya!” pharaoh shouted. “Why is this barbarian, this mannerless foreign pestilence, still on his feet?”

  Silence fell. No one moved, except Karoya, who simply lifted his spear. Reversing it, he held it in throwing position over his shoulder and flexed his knee, awaiting the command of the living god. Mugallu’s gaze dropped from pharaoh to the Nubian. He didn’t move. Then the silence in the hall was ripped by a snarl.

  Mugallu’s head swiveled in pharaoh’s direction, then fixed on a lashing black tail. Cobralike, Sa slowly rose from his place beside the throne. Three stalking paces brought him to pharaoh’s side. The restless tail swirled back and forth and snaked around Tutankhamun’s legs. The flat black head lowered between lean shoulders, ears pinned back. Sa’s wary gaze never left the Hittite.

  Another snarl. Without glancing at the predator, Pharaoh lowered his hand to caress the cat’s obsidian neck. Sa bared his teeth, but his snarl turned to an irritated rumble at the back of his throat. The Hittite hadn’t breathed since that first snarl. When Sa remained at pharaoh’s side, the emissary remembered to take in a gulp of air. Meren nearly smiled. He heard a suppressed snigger from the group of ministers behind him.

  Mugallu heard it too. His mouth worked, and a flush crept up his neck to stain his cheeks. His jaw muscles contorted with fury, but he darted a glance at Karoya, knelt, slowly, and touched his forehead to the floor.

  The silence stretched out, causing even Meren to grow uneasy. Pharaoh was still glaring down at the Hittite. At last he whirled on his heel. Karoya abandoned his battle stance and walked swiftly to meet the king as he descended the throne by the left-hand stair. No one moved while the bodyguard snapped a salute and turned in formation to follow the king. Tutankhamun vanished through the door Meren had used. More guards issued forth to slam the portal closed and plant crossed spears before it.

  Meren blinked several times during the royal departure, trying to take in what had happened. Living gods weren’t supposed to speak to lowly foreign princes. Living gods preserved an aura of divinity, majesty, calm authority. Even Akhenaten had never broken with this tradition.

  “Help me up, boy.”

  Meren straightened and lent his arm to Ay, whose brittle bones protested at such exertion. Around them the court got to its feet. Mugallu jumped up and rounded on Ay, red-faced, tight-lipped, and furious.

  “I am a royal prince, beloved by his majesty and trusted of the great king, Suppiluliumas! Never has the royal message of my king been rejected with such discourtesy. I repeated with all truthfulness the words of my—”

  Meren interrupted smoothly. “Highness, are you telling the vizier that your message, which has provoked the wrath of the living god, was the intentional insult of the king of Hatti?”

  Mugallu started to reply, then hesitated. His crimson face paled, and he began again. “Never has my master, the great king, offered insult to his brother, the divine Lord of the Two Lands.”

  “I thought not,” Meren said.

  Ay sighed and wiggled his fingers at Mugallu in a dismissive gesture. “Leave now, prince. Before the golden one’s wrath renews itself. I would hate to have to send you home in boxes.”

  “Boxes?”

  Meren gave him a gentle smile. “Boxes, probably a dozen or so, highness.” He kept smiling until Mugallu was gone. Then he whispered to Ay.

  “Pharaoh almost brought us to the verge of war. Was this your idea?”

  “Don’t be absurd, boy. The Hittite was even more insolent than usual.”

  “More insolent? What has been going on?”

  Ay was prevented from answering. Ministers and nobles crowded around them, asking them what this amazing occurrence meant. Meren answered inquiries with soothing unconcern while his own apprehension remained unabated. Then, abruptly, Karoya appeared at his side. Friends and officials dropped away from Meren. He gave the Nubian an inquiring look. Karoya made no reply. He simply turned and left, expecting Meren to follow. Meren obeyed; for an Egyptian there was no other response imaginable. When pharaoh commanded, the world bent to his will.

  Chapter 3

  From the shelter of a persea tree in pharaoh’s private garden Meren watched Karoya leave and a pair of royal guards swing shut the carved door in the gate. Surrounded by a high brick
wall, the garden was called Delights of Hathor, and it was deserted. As he’d entered, Meren had glimpsed retreating figures as they went through a door concealed behind dense vines. The chief gardener and his assistants, several water carriers, slaves bearing tall fans, women carrying trays—all had been dismissed.

  The king would be a while disrobing. The heavy crowns, beard, rings, and jeweled linen overrobe demanded intricate maneuvers to get pharaoh out of them without snagging the royal hair or tangling the beads of a necklace with those sewn on the robe. And each item had to be treated with ceremony by privileged servitors who would be offended if Tutankhamun removed even an earring by himself. This was why the boy often avoided formal robing ceremonies.

  Meren wandered over to a stand of sycamores. A delicate pavilion stood in the midst of this small forest, a bright blue, red, and gold jewel amid the dark green foliage. The quarrel with Mugallu would have to be settled. Pharaoh’s harsh words could provoke an exchange of insults during which one side or the other would go too far, inciting war before Egypt was ready. Ay was already handling that problem; Meren had his own duties, other tasks, other worries, not the least of which was his own son.

  Kysen was daily growing more perceptive. Even a few months ago, Meren could have hidden his anxiety from the boy. Wandering across the garden to a line of imported incense trees, Meren sat on the edge of a clay tub in which a myrrh tree flourished. His wrist itched. He pulled a slender pin from the clasp of a wide gold wristband inscribed with his name and titles, opened the hinged bracelet, and removed it.

  He rubbed the white scar on his inner wrist. He could feel the voice of his heart pounding beneath his fingers as he rubbed the skin. Without meaning to, he sank into memories sixteen years old. Then he’d been but eighteen and a prisoner of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. The king had suspected him of adhering to the old gods when pharaoh had thrown them all out in favor of his own deity, the sun disk called the Aten. After killing Meren’s father for refusing to adopt the new god, Akhenaten had imprisoned the son and tested him. Beatings, starvation, threats, nothing had broken Meren and made him confess to betraying the king’s parvenu god.

  Meren could still remember the smell of that shadowed cell where they kept him, a smell composed of dirt, sweat, the coppery scent of blood, and the contents of the sandy hole that served as his chamber pot. Meren pounded his fist against the side of the clay tub, willing himself to abandon this senseless reverie. Yet the images flooded through him as relentlessly as the Nile during Inundation. A burly guard kneeling on his arm while others pinned him to the floor. The white heat of a brazier, a glowing brand in the shape of the sun disk with sticklike rays extending from it and ending in stylized hands.

  Then the images became feelings—that brief space between the moment when the brand met his flesh and that first searing agony; the pain shooting up his arm, into his heart; his scream; the feeling of distance, of floating away from his body, even as he broke out in icy sweat. Then, at last, the nausea that slammed him back into his body and kept him there to endure the pain.

  Cursing aloud, Meren pounded his fist harder against the tub. The memories of pain faded, but not the misery of humiliation. The sun disk scar began to itch again. Meren glanced down at his wrist, smoothed his fingers over the pale circle that formed the sun, rubbed the rays that marked him as a victim of the heretic. Then he replaced the bracelet.

  He should never have taken it off, never touched the scar. The burden of the truth about Nefertiti’s death had disturbed memories of that terrible time in his life, memories he’d tried to seal in a deep stone chamber within his ka. But he shouldn’t lie to himself. It wasn’t just the dangerous secret of Nefertiti’s death that robbed him of sleep and heart’s peace. It was that other, even more momentous death, the one for which he was responsible. How did one justify allowing a living god, a pharaoh, to be killed?

  He had suspected that Ay and his allies were going to end Akhenaten’s life. Years of attempts to curb the king’s excesses had failed, and Ay had no longer been willing to watch Egypt suffer. This Meren had known, and still he’d let Ay send him away to the Libyan border. When he got back, the heretic was dead, supposedly of the same plague that had taken his queen. And now, every time Meren tracked down a criminal, every time he sat in judgment of a thief, revealed the treachery of a courtier or the guilt of a killer, the dishonesty of his position tortured him.

  Someday he would go west, to the netherworld and the Hall of Judgment. There the gods would weigh his heart on the divine balance scale against the feather of Maat—truth, rightness, and order. With such sins burdening his ka, his heart would send the weighing pan crashing to the floor. There the Devouress, Eater of Souls, would snatch it up in her crocodile jaws and sink long, jagged teeth into its meat.

  The edge of the tub was biting into his legs. Meren winced and got to his feet. If he didn’t watch himself, he would succumb to babbling lunacy. No wonder Kysen was suspicious. During the past few weeks these old memories had come back with increasing frequency. It was as if the heretic’s vengeful ka had been aroused by the death of one of the queen’s murderers. Perhaps Akhenaten was punishing him by forcing him to find and reveal the truth, so that Meren would invite his own death.

  He was relieved that this frightening train of thought was quenched when the gate opened and a youth in a simple kilt strode into the garden. He was followed by two slaves bearing ostrich feather fans, another carrying a tray with a wine flagon and goblets, and several guards. His brows drawn together, mouth set in a tight line, he saw Meren and headed for him. The goblets on the tray clattered. The boy stopped, turned, and hissed at the small crowd behind him. The fan bearers backed away. The wine bearer skittered after them. A command like the snap of a whip sent the guards marching out the gate. Karoya appeared bearing the flagon and goblets, shut the gate, and went to the pavilion.

  By this time Meren had reached the boy, who turned from glaring at the gate. Meren sank to his knees and bent to the ground. He heard an exasperated sigh.

  “Get up, Meren. Making your obeisance to my majesty won’t convince me that you’re either biddable or humble.”

  “As thy majesty wishes,” Meren said as he rose.

  “Things are never as I wish.” Tutankhamun stalked past Meren, between dense beds of cornflowers, mandrake, and poppy to a grove of tamarisk trees. In their midst was an arbor covered with ivy. The pharaoh snatched a water bottle hanging from the arbor in a woven net, poured from it into an alabaster cup from a table, and drank. He thrust the bottle at Meren, who poured himself a cup and drank as well. The king downed another cup of water without pause. When he finished, he was breathing fast and glaring at Meren.

  “You’re not to scold me,” Tutankhamun snapped. “I’ll get enough from Ay to fill my belly.”

  “Thy humble cup bearer would not dare—”

  “I remembered you doing that very thing not long ago when I visited you at your country house.”

  It was Meren’s turn to frown. “The golden one stole away from his own court, his own vizier and ministers, to sail unescorted to a house where I was trying to conceal the bodies of—”

  “Don’t!”

  Royal irritation vanished, overwhelmed by pain and horror. Tutankhamun’s face held the beauty of his mother, the great and powerful Queen Tiye. With it he had inherited her large, dark eyes, heavy-lidded, thick-lashed mirrors of a ka too sensitive for the burdens of a god-king.

  Meren waited a moment, giving the boy time to compose himself. “Forgive me, majesty.”

  “I know it’s really Akhenaten’s fault,” Tutankhamun whispered. “If he hadn’t cast out the old gods, beggared their priests and the thousands who depended on them, he wouldn’t have provoked such hatred. He must have done horrible things to provoke the desecration of his tomb, the savaging of his body.”

  He couldn’t let the boy dwell on such anathema. “All has been put right, divine one.” He drew closer to the king, who gave him a look of
desperation.

  “They won’t let me return to Thebes for the reburial. Ay says I must remain here to draw everyone’s attention.”

  “It’s the only way, majesty. You trust Maya. If he can manage the royal treasury, he can arrange for thy majesty’s brother and his family to be concealed in the Valley of Kings, where no one will disturb them again.”

  Tutankhamun sighed again. “Of course.”

  “And only thy majesty can summon the priests of Amun from Thebes to Memphis.”

  A grin brightened the king’s solemn features. “The high priest was so furious he was shaking when he arrived at court. He wanted to chastise me, and he might have dared if I hadn’t told him I needed his advice about the Hittites.”

  At the mention of the Hittites, the king’s smile vanished. “He never kisses my foot!”

  “Majesty?”

  “Mugallu. He pretends. He kneels and bows over my foot, but he never touches me. I give him an honor I grant to few emissaries, and he never kisses my foot. He didn’t this time.”

  “Ah,” Meren said. “And having studied to arouse thy majesty’s just wrath, he succeeded. Thus provoking a quarrel between his experienced master and pharaoh, who is not yet fifteen.”

  Tutankhamun slammed his cup down on the table. “I know, I know.” He paced back and forth, then stopped and grinned at Meren. “I shall tell him I’m sorry.”

  “Majesty?” Meren had never heard a living god even pronounce the word “sorry.” He furrowed his brow, trying to imagine such a thing, and failed.

  The king laughed. “Don’t look so aghast. I’ll send word that I regret that his barbaric rudeness provoked me to harshness.”

  “Ah.” Relief smoothed Meren’s brow. “I was about to counsel the golden one to refrain from such an unprecedented action.”

  “But none of this is what I wished to talk about. Come with me to the pavilion.”

  The king sat on a couch the frame of which had been fashioned as a lion. The gilded wood was surmounted by cushions in the same colors used in the pavilion. Tutankhamun indicated a place on the floor beside the couch, and Karoya put a cushion there for Meren. The guard served plum wine and shat cakes seasoned with tigernuts and sweetened with honey and dates.