The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley

  Neferhotep led Huy into his room and sat at a table piled neatly at one end with rolled documents. Under the window a scribe sat cross-legged, his board on his lap and his palette with its red and black inks and his brushes on a broad low stool at his side. Neferhotep’s look told him to get up and leave. Once he had done so, the leader of the Black Medjays unwound a fraction, and poured wine into two ordinary beakers. Huy noted this, and that Neferhotep poured the wine himself. The man hadn’t let his position go to his head. That was good: but it showed that he was not a fool. Huy should not underestimate him.

  There was a bowl of expensive persea fruit on the table. Huy was not offered one.

  “It’s Kharga wine.”

  “Good.”

  “You prefer Dakhla, as I remember.”

  Huy said nothing. He knew he would not be asked to sit, but he sat anyway, taking the beaker from the table as he did so. He waited.

  “Poison,” Neferhotep began. “They could tell that from the way the body was contorted, and the twisting of the face. But it was not sudden.”

  “How much has the Chief Wife told you?”

  “Senen is very distressed. She told me he came back to his house later than usual. He had visited his mother on the way. He was tired and did not eat. Soon afterwards he went to his room and did not ask her to join him. She heard him cry out in the night and went to him. There was just time for him to take her hand.”

  “And the room servants?”

  “It was not his custom to have servants in his bedroom.”

  Huy frowned. If Horemheb had known that he would have been furious at the lax security. And yet Sonebi’s house was like a fortress.

  Neferhotep had fallen silent, holding his beaker in front of him with both hands as it stood on the table in front of him. He had not touched the wine. He was looking inside himself.

  “I do not know why Djeserkheprure Horemheb felt it necessary to summon you immediately,” he said at last. He raised his eyes to meet Huy’s. “It seems you still have great merit in his eyes. Well, I can do nothing about that.”

  Huy did not know how to answer.

  “What is it I am to do?” he said simply.

  Neferhotep spread his hands and rose, going to the window and looking out at the opaque River. Outside, the Sun was already high. Few people moved in the maze of narrow streets that spread out from below the walls of the great building. Three falcon ships of the king’s navy made their slow way north, their rowers torpid under awnings. There was no other traffic. Beyond the city the farms of the Black Land, their soil now red, straggled along the River’s eastern banks. The view to the west, where the royal cemeteries, the Great Place and the Place of Beauty, lay, was blocked by an angle of the outer wall.

  “There are no doctors to interview,” he said at last, not turning. “Senen sent two body-servants straight to me and two more to Sonebi’s personal physician.”

  Huy understood why. One servant could have gone astray, made contact with spies from the north. Two meant that they could watch each other.

  “They were trusted servants,” continued Neferhotep. “Senen will miss them; but the times are dark.”

  Huy knew what that meant too, and that the other servants of Senen’s household would be told that their fellows had been taken into the king’s service. Whether they believed it or not was their affair. In any case they could do no more about it than Senen herself.

  “And the physician?” he asked.

  “He has the ear of Horemheb. He recognized how Sonebi died and told me. He is safe. But no one else must speak to him. He is being watched, of course.”

  Huy was not surprised. The death of Horemheb’s Chief Interrogator at a time when the Black Country’s northern borders were broached was something which would have to be investigated discreetly and fast. The Southern Capital would be quietly sealed. But there was no work here involving many of the Pharaoh’s ordinary police officers, and the death itself would be kept secret until a successor was appointed, and Sonebi no longer mattered.

  Huy reflected that the situation also explained why Horemheb had turned to him: he had not been active for a long time; he had always looked like one of the stevedores who hung around the beerhouses at the quays between jobs. Horemheb knew he was a good problem-solver; but perhaps it was as much for his ability to go unnoticed as for any other that he had been chosen. Perhaps he was one of the cattle after all.

  Huy drank some of his wine. It was still cool from the jar, and light.

  “What must I do?” he said again.

  Neferhotep turned from the window and looked at him. It was clear that Huy’s tactical humility did not fool him.

  “You are my implement in this, Huy,” he said, calling him by his name without ceremony. “You will work alone. If you can find an answer to the question you will be rewarded. We are looking for agents of the north.”

  “Whom can I talk to?”

  “Start with Senen. Be cautious. Tidy yourself up. Get some clean clothes. A white kilt. And discard your wig. Shave your head. You can pass for a priest-administrator.” Neferhotep came over to him and Huy rose. Neferhotep stood close. “We will not meet again soon. I have been told to leave you alone. You have five days before a report is required. By then your work must be complete. Do not fail. Do not disappoint me.” He paused, looking at Huy, and for a moment it seemed that they were pupil and teacher again. When he spoke it was reluctantly.

  “The king has ordered that you are to have full power. No one is above your suspicion. No one’s word will stand against yours. Now go.”

  Huy made his way back to his house near the docks, keeping to the shady sides of the streets and once side-stepping a guard-ape, made angry by the hot Sun and snapping at the end of the leash which anchored it to its stall in a market in one of the small squares he crossed. Once home he washed, dutifully shaved his head, and changed. He wondered what kind of punishments Sonebi had meted out. Greater than the common ones for criminals: none of the men who begged in the Southern Quarter, their ears or their noses cut off, would have been sentenced through him, nor would those who bore the marks of the five open wounds. Few of either sort lived long anyway; the Sun and the flies saw to that. Blinding, impaling, exile: they were the punishments of the great. Horemheb used his power judiciously but without hesitation in order to keep it. Those who worked against him were quickly turned into object lessons for the rest. Sonebi had been good at his job: as useful to his king as an army in the field. And he would have made enemies.

  Huy did not relish his task.

  The house was a large one, facing north, in its own gardens behind high walls on three sides, while the fourth shared a wall with the palace itself. It was late afternoon, the Sun entering the final hours of the Seqtet Boat, when Huy arrived there, admitted by a body-servant to an arcaded courtyard where a small artificial waterfall ran into a pond filled with pale fish which swam aimlessly and lazily, safe from the attack of white egrets because another servant sat at the pool’s edge, constantly on guard.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Wearing a loose white pleated dress and a wig ritually disarrayed in mourning, a tall woman came towards him unattended. Her long fingers played with a golden ankh suspended from a length of turquoise beads that she held. She wore no other jewellery. Her eyes were so dark it was hard to distinguish the pupils. But they were far from expressionless. They were sad and patient. She had seen perhaps 30 Seasons of the Flood.

  “I am Senen.”

  “I am Huy the scribe.”

  She motioned him to sit on a bench by the pool and placed herself next to him, though there were chairs nearby. Unbidden, a servant appeared with a dish of dates and a silver ewer of wine. Huy noted the expensive metal: no gold here, but silver: a mark of real wealth.

  “I am sorry –” Huy began, but she interrupted him.

  “You are sorry to disturb me with questions so soon after my husband’s death. I accept that the circumstances must be resolved as s
oon as possible. But I can tell you no more than I have already told Neferhotep.”

  “I know that he ate nothing when he came home. Did he drink anything?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “Not in my presence.”

  “Did the servants take anything to him in his room?”

  “I am not aware that anyone did.” Her manner was courteous, yet her thoughts were elsewhere. “He may have eaten at his mother’s house. He sometimes did.”

  “Did he see her often?”

  “He was devoted to her. He visited her frequently.”

  The dense silences between each exchange weighed heavily on Huy, and beyond them only the gentle plashing of the waterfall relieved the quiet of the house. Huy imagined the great empty rooms beyond the courtyard. It was, after all, a house in mourning. The dates and the wine remained untouched by either of them. Senen had not seemed to notice them. She was extending hospitality with automatic politeness, but she was – what? Not bored. Resigned? Her features were strong and regular, but immobile: Huy could read little for certain in her face, which was more handsome than beautiful, the chin strong, the mouth wide. How much did she know about her husband’s work? About what it involved?

  “He was poisoned,” said Huy, wondering as he spoke if he should have let her know.

  But she was unsurprised. “He had enemies. He was aware of the risks he ran, despite the security we live under. He said that it was as well that he had no children. His enemies might have got at him through them.”

  This seemed to Huy unlikely – an excuse. But he said nothing. He noticed that her voice had faltered slightly. To have no children was a disgrace in the Black Land, and now Senen was close to an age when her last chance would be gone.

  “When we met he was a junior priest-administrator. But he was ambitious. When Horemheb ascended the Golden Chair, he saw his chance,” she continued. Huy wondered whether this information was some form of apology for having been married to the Chief Interrogator. Huy recalled all the rumours surrounding Sonebi; that he liked to take an active part in the torture. Not that crude violence had ever been mentioned in connection with his name; though hearsay had credited him with one refinement in the interrogation procedure: he would deprive prisoners of water for five days, and then give them vinegar. Had she known anything about what he did when he was not in his house?

  “I think his work kept you apart. I know his reputation for hard work,” Huy said.

  For the first time a look of irony crossed her face, though it was so fleeting that he wasn’t sure he had caught it.

  “In the past two years he has been less frequently at home.” She looked at him. “I thought you were here to ask questions. If you think our private life concerns you, ask questions.”

  Huy felt increasingly awkward. There were questions he wanted to ask but could not yet bring himself to: had she been happy? What did she do with her time? Had she wanted children?

  “Is there anything?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Little enough. His work took up most of his time.”

  She was silent for a long moment, and then added: “He had a mistress. You might as well learn that from me.”

  Huy wondered what she meant by such an abrupt confidence. The fact alone that Sonebi had had a mistress did not surprise him. It was not unusual. In a household like Sonebi’s, the junior wives fulfilled the role of housekeepers and senior servants. He would have chosen a mistress of similar standing to his chief wife. And he would have known how to be discreet. Great families were like the houses they lived in: surrounded by high walls to contain secrets.

  “Her name is Meryt.”

  “Did you tell Neferhotep this?”

  “No. He was concerned with the immediate circumstances. But I knew there would be more questions. I simply wish to end this so that I may mourn in peace.”

  “Who is Meryt?”

  “The daughter of Pashed, my husband’s physician.”

  “Does Pashed know?” asked Huy, as his heart acknowledged this information.

  “Pashed is not a friend. He is close to my husband’s family.”

  Huy sat for a moment without speaking. In the silence, he became aware of the servant guarding the fish, as he discreetly stretched his limbs.

  “It is of no importance,” said Senen. He felt her retreating from him. He was not at ease with her, yet her sadness embraced him. There was something else that he could not quite identify.

  “You have not drunk your wine,” she said.

  “Nor you yours.”

  “It does not matter.” What she said then surprised him. “You are troubled that I am composed about this. I know what my husband’s work was. I know what compromises he made to hold power. I know there were many things about him that earned hatred. But whatever you discover, believe this: I loved him.”

  Huy realized that for the first time there was absolute truth in her voice.

  Darkness fell quickly in the Black Land, and the city was silent as Huy made his dusty way home. He avoided the narrow paved roads which divided the city into its quarters, where there would still be people; instead he used the back alleys which he knew better than the lines on his palms. He was not followed.

  Soon after the arrival of the next day’s Sun in the Matet Boat, Huy sat in another, less opulent courtyard, belonging to a house outside the vast bounds of the palace. It was a pleasant place, the garden well tended and planted with lotus and palm. Opposite him, the spare old woman – she had seen 60 Seasons of the Flood – leant forwards in her chair. Next to her was another woman, 20 years younger, erect as an egret and as slim and white, though dark lines were incised about her mouth and wrinkled the make up around her eyes. She sat upright and neither her back nor her arms touched her chair. Behind them servants stood, and by them crouched a scribe with his palette and brushes, ready to record what was said. The ritual hospitality had been offered. It was time to begin.

  “You have seen my daughter-in-law?” asked the older woman, her mouth tight.

  “Yes.”

  “Before seeing me.”

  Huy inclined his head. “She is the Chief Wife.”

  “Yes.”

  Huy looked at Herya. Sonebi’s mother was in the grip, not of grief, but anger. Her body was tense and her eyes keen. It was not long since her own husband had died and she was now in double mourning. Huy had no respect for the old aristocracy whose power had been restored since the death of the great Pharaoh, Akhenaten, but their haughty presence still unsettled him. He knew he would have to pick his way carefully, and had not counted on being joined at the interview by Sonebi’s sister, Bakmut. Both women were eager to talk.

  “My mother is aware that you have observed the forms,” the thin woman said.

  “I will be as brief as I can,” Huy began cautiously.

  “You must not trust Senen. She will do all she can to keep what she has gained through marriage,” said Herya immediately. “It is not surprising. Yet she could not in the five Seasons of the Flood that she lived with my son produce one child, not even a girl.”

  She stopped talking as abruptly as she had started. Huy looked at his feet. He was sitting in the Sun and the hair on his scalp, beginning to grow again, itched. He ran a furtive hand over his head.

  “That is why she was jealous,” said Bakmut. “It is understandable. But it was hard when he felt he could only visit his family in secret – and so soon after our father’s death, when our mother needed comfort.”

  “He came to you on the night of his own death,” said Huy.

  The women looked at each other before they looked at Huy, and the scribe sitting nearby suspended his brush.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he eat with you?”

  “He ate, yes,” said Herya.

  “What?”

  “Do you usually speak so directly?” she countered imperiously.

  “I represent the king in this,” Huy said, not to be faced down, and wondering why the old woman should
take this tack now.

  “He did not dine with us. But he took some duck and onions, and wheat bread, and some wine,” said Bakmut. “I served him myself. That is unusual; but he preferred to be quite alone with us when he could.”

  “He loved us,” said Herya. “He should have stayed with us.”

  “Why should I not trust Senen?” asked Huy, noticing that the scribe had begun to record the conversation again.

  “She wanted to rise. She married him to rise. It has brought her a house in the palace compound,” said Herya. “I do not know what you are doing here. I shall complain to Neferhotep. You should be talking to that woman, not prodding here with your dirty fingers, ignoring our grief.” The old woman’s face was hard and bitter. Jealousy would colour everything she said, and Huy saw no reason to prolong the conversation. The scribe had already put down his brush again.

  Huy had heard enough, and took his leave. Bakmut, to his surprise, accompanied him to the gate.

  “My mother is not herself,” she apologized. “The deaths of a husband and a son are hard for her to bear.”

  “You have suffered the same loss.”

  “Almost the same. I loved neither man as much as she did.” She laid a hand on Huy’s arm with a quick, birdlike movement, but with the gesture she smiled. It was an awkward smile, but there was no doubt in Huy’s heart that this was an attempt to charm him. And the smile for a moment transformed her face. Huy could see that she had once been beautiful.

  “Who might have killed your brother?”

  “I do not think his marriage was a happy one,” she answered carefully, not looking at him.

  “The palace fears he was killed by agents of the north. There will be war with King Suppiluliumas soon.”

  “Then you are looking in the wrong place here.”

  “Do you know Senen?”

  “Of course.”

  “But well?”

  “No. We have met rarely. My mother never liked her, and we both hoped Sonebi would stay with us always. We are a close family. Senen’s father was a priest.”