Now, as he picked his way down a newly restored canal bank, he reveled in the freedom of a simple kilt, loincloth, and papyrus sandals—and no jewels. Most of his friends thought he was odd. Every Egyptian dreamed of having such wealth and rank. Meren dreamed of a life free of guilt, obligations, and serpentine machinations. And above all else, he longed for a time when he wouldn’t fear for his family.
Since Akhenaten had ordered his father killed and his cousin Ebana’s wife and son had been murdered, Meren had lived with the certainty that annihilation could strike his loved ones no matter how great his power became. He had only to offend one prince foolish enough to risk the king’s fury. So many ways to invite death—a slip of the tongue at court, interfering with some official’s scheme of corruption, standing between the priests of Amun and pharaoh once too often. After months spent immersed in a sea of peril, he welcomed being able to walk alone in the approaching darkness.
The charioteer he’d sent to find Nefertiti’s favorite cook had given him a description of the old woman’s house. It was a little removed from the village, to the south and farther toward the desert than any other. Meren left the fertile fields that took up almost all the land fed by the river’s Inundation. He met a few farmers on their way home. They carried digging tools used to repair canals and shore up dikes. Inundation was coming, and Egypt must be ready for it.
A group of men and boys saluted him in the manner of a peasant to a superior, but Meren wasn’t alarmed. His skin wasn’t as dark as that of a man who worked in the fields. His kilt was clean and his body free of grime. They would mistake him for a scribe.
The land rose as he walked across the higher, less desirable tracts where Inundation didn’t always deposit its yearly supply of fertile soil. The solar orb turned carnelian as it vanished behind the distant desert cliffs. It was growing late, and he encountered no more villagers. From a field riddled with cracks caused by relentless Drought season heat, he could see a solitary farmhouse of an old design. The sun was vanishing behind it, taking most of the light.
His foot hit sand. He had reached the desert margin. The cook’s house was on a rise that would keep it above water during Inundation. Meren climbed up a few steps, then turned to survey the valley. He skipped quickly over the deserted fields and scoured the tree-lined banks of the Nile. Anyone following him would be forced to keep to the taller vegetation near the water’s edge. He didn’t think he’d been followed, but if he was wrong, his pursuer was no doubt cursing him for delaying and thus forcing him to remain near the bank in easy reach of crocodiles.
Finally Meren put his back to the river and approached the house. In the fading light he could discern no fire, no lamp. He sensed movement and stopped suddenly, only to see a vulture crouched just beyond the house launch its ungainly body into the air. Meren contemplated the flapping wings. The corners of his mouth descended to form a frown, but he resumed his walk.
He paused again only a few steps from the cook’s abode. Like countless others from the delta to Nubia, this house was a two-story mud-brick building. Half of the upper level overhung the lower, and the overhang was supported by two columns. The walls extended from the house in two low arms to form a yard sealed by a third cross-wall. A wooden half-gate allowed entry to the yard, where Meren could see two domed granaries. Against the left front corner, the owners had built a conical oven with a hole in the top for venting. Exterior stairs went to the living quarters on the second floor; the lower level provided storage and shelter for animals.
Through the high windows dim lamplight was visible, but Meren couldn’t see or hear anyone. Geese wandered around the yard and in the ruins of a garden beside the house. More geese snapped at insects there and trod on the dried and half-devoured remains of onions, beans, and yellow peas.
“Kek-kek!”
Meren almost jumped as a goose stuck its head around the gate and fussed at him. It had a white underside, dark plumage on its back, and two black bars on the light wing coverts.
“Cursed fowl,” he whispered.
Frightening the bird away with a gentle kick, Meren pulled on the gate. Its hinges needed repair. A quick survey of the yard, stable, and storage area revealed an empty stall for a donkey, a broken granite quern, and fragments of spindle whorls. There was nothing in jars that should have held dried fruit, grain, oil. Other things were missing as well—goats, farming tools, nets and hooks for fishing, sickles, and winnowing fans.
Leaving the storage area, Meren walked between the two columns and mounted the stairs to the upper floor. The door was ajar. Inside he found a deserted living chamber with mats, worn cushions, and a cold brazier. A few pieces of furniture were scattered around, all of old, inferior wood, probably sycamore. The chamber was dark except for a diffuse glow from a ceramic lamp on the floor near an entryway that probably led to the kitchen. Movement in the shadows caught Meren’s eye. He backed up a step, then stopped as he recognized yet another goose. It was perched on a stone quern in the corner, devouring grain.
Meren thought about hailing the cook and her husband, but decided not to. He hadn’t expected to find the woman in such a neglected place. He had assumed that the cook, Hunero, had been given provision from the royal estates when she left, or that she had taken a position with a noble household. Favored royal servants were symbols of rank and prerogative. Hunero should never have lacked for a place. And surely Akhenaten, heretic though he had been, would have provided for his beloved queen’s loyal and trusted cook.
Yet this farm had been neglected for a long time. No one had replastered the walls, repaired the gate, or kept adequate provisions. How had its owners survived? Sustenance must have come from elsewhere. He was always suspicious of those who seemed not to toil and yet prospered—if living in this half-ruined old place could be called prospering. What was going on?
Already wary, Meren grew more uneasy as he looked around the living chamber. In a niche built into the wall sat a double statue of the heretic and his queen, Nefertiti. A foolish display, even for a former royal servant. The heretic was anathema. It would only take some officious tax collector or priest’s report to invite persecution. Even dead Akhenaten still threatened those he touched, as he had threatened Meren.
He walked over to the niche, which was bathed in the dim lamplight, and stared at it. Seldom since his death had Meren looked upon the visage of Akhenaten. This cheap limestone version had been painted so that the king wore bright trappings. More talented than the sculptor, the artist had painted the eyes so accurately that they held a reflection of the black fire of Akhenaten’s gaze. Meren quickly looked away from it to examine Nefertiti’s fragile figure. His fascination with the contrast between the two must have been the reason he was caught off guard by the crash behind him.
Whirling around, Meren drew the dagger in his belt and cocked his arm over his shoulder, ready to throw. As he sank into a crouch that would offer a smaller target for an attacker, he spotted a tiny woman in the threshold between the kitchen and the living chamber. She had dropped a bowl of water.
“Thief, thief, thief, thief, thief!” the lady screeched.
Meren winced at the shrill trumpeting sound of her voice. He was sure Egyptian women developed blaring voices that could be heard across a battlefield from keeping order among their children. The shrill voice rose higher; the goose honked and hissed. Meren thrust his dagger into his belt and covered his ears.
“Peace, old woman! Do I look like a thief?”
The woman’s mouth snapped shut. Her jaws pressed together and spread out as they do when back teeth have been lost.
“What are you doing here, boy?”
Startled at being addressed in so familiar a manner, Meren blinked, then said, “I’m searching for a woman called Hunero, who was favorite cook to the Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti, the justified, and I seek her husband, Bay, also.”
“Hunero is down in the yard milking the donkey, young one.” The old woman vanished back into the kitchen without an
other word. Meren was about to follow when she reappeared, carrying another bowl of water, which she set near the goose.
“There, Beauty. Drink deep, my sweet, my little gosling. She’s a little treasure. She’s a little daub of honey, she’s a—”
“Did you say Hunero was in the yard milking a donkey?”
“A goat, fool. Milk a donkey, what a mad thought.”
“Aged one, there is no one in the yard.”
“My name is Satet, boy. You should know that if you’re a friend of my sister’s.”
Satet seated herself on a stool and stroked the goose named Beauty with a trembling hand. Meren guessed that she had six or seven decades, a great age seldom achieved by those of humble rank. Like many who attain a revered age, Satet had shrunk as her years increased until she was the size of a twelve-year-old boy.
Unfortunately, her skin hadn’t shrunk as her bones did, and now she looked like a huge bag into which had been tossed a collection of children’s bones. Her neck was pleated with more wrinkles than a courtier’s robe. Wobbly blue veins protruded from her skin like earthworms. Her hair had been shorn in a haphazard manner so that it hung in thin, irregular lengths.
However, her age and frailty didn’t concern Meren. He was disturbed by the slight but constant nodding of her head, her strange conversation, and the fact that she had stuck at least a dozen wooden combs in her hair at different angles.
“Satet,” Meren said, “where did you say Hunero and Bay have gone?”
“Oh, them? They’re not here.”
“I know, but where have they gone?”
“They left, all of a sudden, like nomads in a drought.
One day Hunero came to me and said they were leaving, going to the city to seek fortune. A lot of folly, that is.”
“Did Hunero say which city?”
Satet was stroking Beauty again. The goose shifted her weight from one foot to the other, marching in place as she rubbed her back.
“Aged one, about Hunero.”
“Oh, she’ll be back soon. She just went to fetch honey from the hives out back.”
Suppressing a sigh of exasperation, Meren drew near the seated woman. “Do you live here alone?”
“Of course, young one. Do you see anyone else here? That lazy Bay convinced Hunero they’d be safer in the city, among lots of people.”
“Safer, why safer?” Meren squatted so that his head was level with Satet’s and caught her gaze. “Please, aged one, tell me why they felt safer in the city.”
A voice came at him from behind. “No one knows why they left.”
Meren’s hand went to his dagger again. Looking over his shoulder he watched a youth come toward him. Unarmed, he carried a sagging basket in both hands, which he set beside Satet.
“I have brought your food and supplies, good grandmother.”
Meren’s hand dropped from his dagger hilt. This boy was no danger. He bore no weapon except for a small flint knife stuck in the waistband of his kilt. He was tall, but thin as youths are before they attain the musculature of manhood. Satet patted his head and trailed her wrinkled fingers through smooth, soft hair that gleamed as though it had been recently washed.
“Your name?” Meren asked.
“I am Tentamun, master. Bay paid me goods worth many copper deben to look after the good grandmother until he came back.”
“So you aren’t related to Satet. Where did they go, and when?”
“They left, oh, almost a week ago. Five or six days, I think. But Bay refused to say where they were going, and now no one in the village has heard from either Hunero or her husband Bay.”
Satet gave Tentamun a playful slap on the arm. “I told you, boy, Hunero is in the yard milking the donkey.”
“Yes, revered grandmother,” Tentamun replied with patience.
“Did anyone see which way they sailed?” Meren asked.
“No, master, but I happened to be up early the morning they were to leave, and I saw a temple trading ship pass by going south. I haven’t seen Hunero or Bay since that vessel sailed by.”
“South,” Meren repeated.
He pondered his situation. He couldn’t chase all the way to Nubia in hopes of finding the city in which his quarry chose to hide. He wasn’t going to pry the truth from Satet, if she even knew what the truth was, without a great deal of patience and time. He couldn’t stay here. Satet would have to go with him back to Memphis.
“You’re certain no one knows where the couple went?” he asked Tentamun.
“Yes, good master. Their leaving has been the talk of the village. Even the headman doesn’t know, and we’re all worried about Satet.” Tentamun swept his arm around in a half circle. “After all, they took almost everything with them, even their cookware. We don’t think Hunero and Bay are going to return.”
Meren remained silent for a moment, assessing Tentamun’s direct look and the way his hands lay comfortably on his thighs as he knelt, resting on the backs of his heels.
“I think you’re right. Those two aren’t coming back. And I am left with a problem. My master, a great noble, has need of an experienced cook to train several in his household. I was sent to find Hunero. My master detests failure, but perhaps he will forgive me if I bring Satet.”
“Oh, but—”
“You can cook, can’t you?” he asked the old woman.
“Better than that conceited Hunero,” Satet said with a sniff. “I was placed in the household of the high priest of Ptah in Memphis. Hunero says she’ll get a place even more grand than that. I told her she’s imagining above herself. She thinks she’s going to be a royal cook, of all things.”
His head was beginning to ache from trying to follow Satet in her voyages through the past and present and back again. Meren spent a while longer satisfying Tentamun that the old one would be safe in his care. Then the youth left, his departure unnoticed by Satet. She was too busy shrieking for her pet cat.
“Treasure, here Treasure, where is mother’s little girl?”
Meren covered his ears and glanced around the living chamber. He would sleep on a pile of mats tonight and leave for Memphis with Satet in the morning. He only hoped she would remember him then.
He slept lightly, waking every few hours. Most of the time he woke because Satet was roaming around the house. She napped throughout the day, rather than sleeping through the night. Once he came awake with a jolt to find the old woman’s snores from the single bedchamber echoing off the bare plastered walls. Painfully alert, Meren listened to the deep groaning bark that came with each intake of breath. He had a vague memory of something moving beside him.
Looking around, he could see little in the blackness. He assumed Beauty was still nestled in her basket stuffed with linen scraps. The feeling of air disturbed by the movement of a body remained with him. Was it the remnant of a dream, the cat Treasure, or worse, a demon?
“What demon would bother with this neglected and peculiar household?” he mumbled.
Meren rose and went to the door. Pulling it open, he stood searching the yard, the garden, the barren fields. He heard an owl and looked up. A black silhouette crossed the sky, descended, and settled on the gatepost. Meren couldn’t make out the flattened face, but he could see the black feather tufts.
Without warning the great bird’s head swiveled around, then twisted back in Meren’s direction. With a hoot that sounded across the horizon and reverberated from the desert cliffs, the creature sprang into the air. Wings flapping, it climbed the sky, its cries fading before Meren lost sight of it.
He remained at the door to listen for what had startled the owl. In the yard all was stillness. It was so quiet he could hear the north breeze whistle through the vent in the roof. Finally he perceived movement. Treasure, a fat black-and-gray bundle of meanness and gluttony, jumped onto the gatepost and sniffed the spot where the owl had perched. Meren watched the feline stalk along the wall and leap to the ground outside the yard. A black spot, she moved with deliberate care into t
he fields. Nothing else moved. The cat. He’d sensed the cat leaving the house. After assessing the likelihood that the source of his awakening might be something more sinister, Meren went back to his makeshift bed. Once inside the house, all he could hear were Satet’s resounding snores and her intervening snuffles. The cat had startled the owl. He closed his eyes only to open them wide at the eruptions coming from Satet’s bedchamber. If it hadn’t been the cat that had frightened the owl, it had been those snores.
Now Kysen knew where Ese had gotten the inspiration for her imitation Greek house. He glanced at the guard on either side of him, then raised his gaze up past the brilliant frescoes to the people on the second floor who leaned over a balustrade and stared down at him silently. His escorts had halted him beside the circular central hearth, and the balustrade went around the entire square walk. Above it rose the clerestory window, now dark and sprinkled with stars. Ese had thrust him into the care of these two spear-carrying want-wits and ordered them to take him to Othrys. That she hadn’t come with them said something about the relationship between her and the Greek.
A silver-haired Mycenaean in a long robe appeared and shuffled across the hall. Those in his path gave way. Many of them were accomplished bandits and pirates who stepped aside for no man, so Kysen knew immediately that this Greek was an intimate of Othrys. The farther into the hall the man came, the quieter its occupants became. Silver Hair’s steps faltered and ceased as he drew near Kysen. He squinted, then drew a sharp breath and scuttled back the way he’d come.
Conversation failed to resume, and Kysen tried to look unconcerned that everyone seemed to be staring at him. A boom signaled the closing of a door somewhere within the house. It was a deceptive place, appearing to be one moderately large building when it really occupied the entire space of the two adjacent dwellings as well. Why hadn’t such a large residence attracted the attention of the mayor and the royal officials concerned with foreigners?
Another boom sounded, closer, and then Silver Hair reappeared, entering from a door painted to look like part of a fresco of leaping dolphins in sea waves. Taking short, careful steps, Silver Hair came to them, made a signal with his hand, and was off again. One of the guards shoved Kysen, and he followed. When they left the hall, Silver Hair picked up the pace and led Kysen through a maze of rooms and corridors.
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