by Gary Corby
That was Barzanes’s summation of Athens’s greatest man, and I couldn’t say I disagreed.
“Tell me again the name of this ambassador,” Barzanes said.
“I was told his name is Megabazos.”
“This man I know all too well,” Barzanes said. “You called him a friend. He is not. I once investigated Megabazos for enriching himself at the expense of the state.”
“And?”
“He was guilty. His sin is great. When he dies his soul will be cast into a pit of molten iron for all eternity.”
“That sounds painful.”
“But it won’t happen soon enough. The Great King chastised Megabazos but did not punish him.”
“Political influence?” I suggested. I knew how that worked.
Barzanes was expressionless. “Artaxerxes the King decided the man was more useful alive than dead.”
“Presumably because your king had this Megabazos earmarked for the trip to Sparta. By any chance did this investigation happen recently?” I asked, because another thought had occurred to me.
“Immediately before I left for Egypt,” Barzanes said.
“Is Megabazos the sort to hold grudges?”
“He hates me as few other men do,” Barzanes said. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. I think it obvious, Barzanes, that in addition to gold this Megabazos carried one of your king’s crossbows to Sparta.”
“This is outrageous, Athenian,” Barzanes raged. “The whole security of my nation has been endangered by a foolish nobleman who thought to give a new weapon to the Spartans. The Spartans of all people! Ahura Mazda preserve us all. We may as well just turn the weapon around and shoot ourselves in the head.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s your problem and not mine,” I told him.
“You think so, Athenian?” Barzanes said. “Then what happens when an army of Spartans armed with crossbows arrives outside the walls of Athens?
That brought me up short. Dear Gods, we were all in trouble.
“The crossbow can penetrate armor.” Barzanes put the boot in.
I had personally seen a bolt fired from that thing fly through a mud-brick wall. Yes, of course it could penetrate bronze armor.
“We have to get that weapon back,” I said.
“What a good idea,” Barzanes said.
Barzanes let us go. As he said, it was obvious we hadn’t killed the General.
We walked away with the only worthwhile clue: the girl-child. Barzanes seemed unaware of her existence, or that she habitually stayed with her protector.
Gentle questioning from Diotima elicited the unhappy news that the girl hadn’t seen a thing.
“It was dark. There were footsteps. Then a twanging sound.” The girl burst into tears.
It took the best part of the morning and a very expensive slice of honeycomb to calm her down.
During this period Herodotus had been thinking. He said, “Child, think back to yesterday. After we left, what did the General do?”
“He ate some bread,” the girl said solemnly.
“What about after that?” Herodotus pressed. “Did he go anywhere? Did he talk to anyone?”
The girl nodded.
“What did he do?” Herodotus asked.
“He went to the undertaker.” The girl hiccupped, either from crying or eating too much honeycomb.
The undertaker? You normally go to the undertaker after you’ve been murdered, not before.
“Why?” Herodotus asked the obvious question. “What did he say to them?”
“I don’t know. He bade me wait outside.”
“Was that usual?”
“No.” The girl hiccupped again.
Not knowing what else to do with her, we took the child with us back to the inn, where we found Maxyates and Djanet. The innkeeper let me stand inside the door, so long as I wore five special amulets to ward against spreading bedbugs. After they slipped away, Max and Djanet had made their way back to our street, where they had waited across from the inn to see if Barzanes’s soldiers appeared. When they didn’t, they went inside.
“What do we do with the girl?” Herodotus asked.
It was a good question.
“We can’t take her with us,” I said. If nothing else, she would be in too much danger.
“Give her back to the beggars?” Maxyates suggested. “This seems the only option.”
“I have an idea,” Djanet said. She stood and walked out the back, to where the innkeeper and his family lived.
“Problem solved!” she announced on return.
“How?”
“I did a deal with the landlord,” Djanet said. “His daughter’s getting married next month.” Djanet pointed at the girl-child. “Meet the inn’s new serving girl.”
This seemed a fine solution, but something bothered me. “You mentioned a deal,” I said.
Djanet shrugged. “I told the innkeeper that this child brought particularly good luck to anyone who cared for her.”
“I take it you didn’t mention that her last protector died horribly.”
“Slipped my mind completely. I suggest we load her down with every good luck charm we can find in the marketplace.”
“Good idea.”
That evening, Herodotus and Maxyates sat at the table in the common room. Maxyates was telling Herodotus all about his homeland.
“. . . and in the far south there is forest, vast swathes of forest. Many extraordinary animals and people live there.”
“Such as?” Herodotus asked. He was scribbling furiously.
“There are snakes that can eat a man whole. I have seen this with my own eyes.”
I wondered if Maxyates was having Herodotus on, but I said nothing. Herodotus took Max’s story at face value.
“Any other animals?” he asked, pen poised.
“Elephants, lions, bears. I believe Hellas does not have these animals.”
“We have bears!” I put in. “I once had a run-in with a bear—”
“Go on, Max,” Herodotus said. They ignored me completely.
“Horned donkeys,” Maxyates continued.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Then there are the dog-headed men.”
Now I knew Maxyates was making fun of Herodotus.
The historian looked up at Maxyates, fascinated. “Do they truly look so?”
“The head of a dog, on the body of a man,” Maxyates said solemnly. “The men are dwarves. I have never seen one of these strange men alive, but I once saw the body of one. A hunter had brought him in. Apparently the two had fought.”
Herodotus wrote more.
“This forest seems a dangerous place,” I said.
“Many die there,” Max agreed. “But the rewards are great for a successful hunter.”
“What of your own people?” Herodotus asked.
“We lead ordinary lives,” said the man dyed red from head to toe, and with all the hair on one side of his head shaved off. “We live in villages and grow plants for food and we hunt.”
“Does anyone live inside the forest?” Herodotus asked.
“There are the wild men and wild women,” Maxyates said. “They do not live in villages. Nor do they wear clothes.”
“Don’t they get cold?” I asked.
“No, for they are covered in thick, black fur all over their bodies.”
I had always thought Maxyates was a truthful and humorless man. But after this I resolved to judge his words more carefully.
The House of Death
The news that the General had visited an undertaker before he was murdered was suggestive. In particular, it suggested we should talk to the undertaker.
“Perhaps the Gods sent him a vision of his own doom,” Herodotus said. “The General might have go
ne there to arrange his affairs.”
“The man was a beggar,” Djanet scoffed. “He had no affairs. Besides, the House of Tutu is the most expensive undertaker around, and in the land of the pyramids, that’s saying something.”
“The General might have been richer than you thought,” Herodotus said.
“I happen to know the General gave all his money to the poor,” Djanet said.
“But he was the poor!”
“Yes, well,” Djanet huffed. “That’s why he was poor.”
“How did you come to know the General in the first place?” Diotima asked. She sounded suspicious.
“Oh, I know just about everyone,” Djanet said grandly.
“Hmm.” I could tell from her manner that Diotima was suspicious. I could also tell that she wasn’t sure why she was suspicious.
I paid close attention to Maxyates during this exchange. For all that he looked odd, he was the closest we had in the party to another Egyptian. Maxyates seemed to take Djanet at face value.
It was unbearably hot walking down the streets of Memphis. I stopped at every drink vendor we passed, in the hope of a decent cup of wine, but all they had was beer.
Meanwhile, Maxyates and Herodotus were arguing about the Gods.
Maxyates, the weird-haired Trojan philosopher, and Herodotus, the inveterate traveler, had both seen much of the world and thought much upon it. Maxyates had taken objection to Herodotus’s idea that the Gods might have sent a vision to the Blind General.
“Would the Hellene gods send a vision to an Egyptian?” Maxyates said. “The people of the Black Land worship different gods to yours.”
Herodotus scratched his head. “It’s a vexing question. I’ve always wondered about the gods in other lands. I think they must be one and the same.”
“Different peoples have different gods,” Maxyates said. “This all men know.”
“That cannot be true,” Herodotus said. “I think rather that the same gods must manifest themselves to different peoples in different ways.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know,” Herodotus said. “But does it make sense that there could be more than one king of the gods? We Hellenes have Zeus. The Egyptians I’ve learned have Amun-Ra. Clearly therefore Amun-Ra must be Zeus.”
“They are nothing alike,” Maxyates said.
“But they have to be the same god,” Herodotus insisted. “You can’t have two lots of gods running the world. What happens if they disagree?”
“Did that not happen when your Hellene gods fought the Titans?” Maxyates said.
“Well, yes,” Herodotus said, reluctantly.
“There you are then. Two sets of gods are perfectly possible,” Maxyates said.
But it was obvious Herodotus didn’t agree. The two of them squabbled every step of the way to the funeral home.
The House of Tutu rested on an elegant street in the southern part of the city. The street was so wide that there was room for a row of palm trees down the middle, to give shade. I was struck by how different the architecture was in Egypt compared to Athens. In Egypt the buildings were flat, white and square. Flat walls and flat roofs. I suppose they got away with it because it never rained. Athenians would have painted everything in sight in bright colors, but the Egyptians used whitewash and left it at that. In Egypt, a man judged the quality of his home by the cleanliness of his white walls. I asked Djanet about this.
“It’s cooler inside if it’s white outside,” she said.
Herodotus made a note.
The glare made me shield my eyes and made the sun seem ten times worse.
A man stood at the entrance to the funeral home. He blinked at the sight of us—obviously, we didn’t look like customers—but he opened the door anyway.
Inside was the coolest, most pleasant building I had yet seen in this country. The layout was much like an Athenian home: rooms surrounding an open central courtyard. Yet here someone had stretched sheets of white linen across the open inner space. The sun’s light was a diffuse glow. A fountain bubbled in the center and vines climbed the walls and stone columns to make the place seem more like a garden than a place of funereal business.
A man entered from the other side. He arrived so quickly I thought the doorman must have signaled that there were visitors. His hair was gray and straight and his face immaculately shaved. I had never seen a man with less stubble. Though he was obviously old, perhaps in his sixties or seventies, he was trim rather than thinned by age. The clothes he wore were like something out of the frescoes dotted all over the temples: a loin cloth of the purest white linen. His chest would have been bare had he not wrapped about him a wide stole of some sort, also of white linen. The effect was impressive, set off against the dark olive of his skin. It was then that I realized there was barely a hair on his chest. Had he had his chest hairs plucked out? I thought he must have. If so, he was braver than I was.
He began a greeting in Egyptian, saw the look on our faces, then switched smoothly to Greek. “I am Tutu, of the House of Tutu. I bid you welcome. I see that you are not among our regular customers. How, then, may I serve you?”
Regulars? At an undertaker?
I said, “Thank you, Tutu. My name is Nicolaos. I’m from Athens—”
Tutu held up a hand to stop me. “Rest assured that will be of no difficulty. I am always happy to embalm foreigners.”
“Er . . . you misunderstand. We wanted to ask you about a conversation you had yesterday, with the man known as the Blind General. What did he want?”
Tutu was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You will understand, I am sure, that I never discuss other people’s business.”
My shoulders slumped. The embalmer spoke with such firmness that I knew we would get nothing from him. We had wasted our time.
“Your reply is very right and proper,” Herodotus said approvingly.
“Thank you,” said the embalmer to the historian.
Herodotus spoke warmly. “I am most pleased to meet an embalmer of Egypt. All men know that the skill of the Egyptians in these matters is the greatest in all the world, and I am given to understand that the House of Tutu is unsurpassed amongst the Egyptians.”
Tutu fairly glowed.
“I find funeral customs a fascinating subject,” Herodotus went on. “I like to learn of them wherever I go. Did you know that in the land of Scythia, when the king dies, they dig an enormous grave? They lay the body on a mattress, so that in death the king will be in comfort.”
“This is a good custom.” Tutu nodded.
“Then they strangle to death one of the king’s concubines,” Herodotus said with happy enthusiasm.
Diotima gasped. “Dear Gods!”
“They do it so that the king will have companionship in the afterlife,” Herodotus said. “They lay the woman’s body alongside the king. Then they kill the king’s servant, his cook, his groom, and his favorite horse. These too attend the king in death. Lastly they fill the grave with dinnerware made of purest gold. Over this they heap a vast mound of dirt.”
“A Pharaoh—even a barbarian one—deserves such comfort,” Tutu said in approval.
“I wonder if the concubine and servants feel the same way,” Diotima said in ill-disguised disgust.
Herodotus ignored my wife. “Then the king’s mourners ritually cleanse themselves,” he said. “They erect tents made of hide, in which they place stones that have been heated to a red-hot glow upon a fire. The people lather their heads with soap made of ash and goat fat. Then they enter the tents, where they throw the seed of the hemp plant upon the hot stones.”
“Why?” Tutu asked dubiously.
“I don’t know,” Herodotus admitted. “But when they do this, the Scythians shout for joy.”
“A strange custom,” Tutu said. “Is that the end of the ceremony?”
Tutu nodded in approval. “These Scythians of whom you speak obviously know the importance of honoring their king. I see too that you are a man of fine taste to interest yourself in such things. May I ask your name?”
“Herodotus.”
“Have you seen the pyramids?”
“I hope to.”
“You should. In the days of my forebears it was much the same as you describe. Hundreds of servants willingly took poison to provide the Pharaoh with a proper retinue in death.” Tutu sighed. “Alas, those halcyon days are long gone.”
“Good,” Diotima muttered under her breath.
Tutu didn’t hear her. He said, speaking to Herodotus, “I admit, when I saw foreigners in my vestibule I had not thought to meet someone of such refinement and culture. May I return the favor by demonstrating to you our own methods?”
“That would be admirable,” Herodotus said.
But I didn’t like the sound of that. “Demonstrate on whom?” I asked.
This caused the embalmer to turn his attention from Herodotus to me.
“Tell me, young man, have you given any thought to your own Afterlife?”
“I confess it’s something I’ve been hoping to put off.”
Tutu shook his head in dismay. “You can never start planning early enough. After all, your journey to eternity begins from the moment you are born.” He took me by the arm and led me through a wide entrance at the back of the courtyard. The others followed behind.
In the room beyond were more coffins than I had ever seen in my life, each placed upon a stone pedestal as if they were wares for sale.
“Lie in this,” Tutu said.
“But it’s a coffin!” I objected.
“It’s a sarcophagus, to be precise. Notice that the outer case matches the shape of a person. I’d like you to try it on for size.”
I opened my mouth to say that I would sooner lie on a crocodile, but Herodotus said, “Go ahead, Nicolaos. This is perfect material for my book.”
