The Assassins of Isis

by P. C. Doherty

  Amerotke nodded in agreement.

  ‘Then, my lord Valu, I have one further question, or rather two. First, was General Suten accustomed to mixing poppy seed with his wine?’

  ‘He was.’ Lady Lupherna spoke out strongly. ‘My lord judge, I must tell you this, something we have only learnt since his death: my husband was suffering from pains in his stomach. He had visited the Temple of Isis and been examined. Such pains always came after he had eaten, especially at night. The Chief Physician, High Priest Impuki, prescribed a few grains of poppy seed to be taken late in the evening.’

  ‘Good.’ Amerotke glanced at Lord Valu, who didn’t disagree. ‘My second question,’ Amerotke continued, ‘is even more important. If Heby murdered his master, surely he would have known he would be caught? After all, he has openly confessed that whilst he was on duty no one climbed those steps, that he never left his post, while you, Lord Valu, have clearly demonstrated that those snakes must have been brought on to the roof. I find it difficult to accept that a man in his right senses would murder his master in such a public way when the only conclusion to be reached was that he was responsible.’

  Valu stared stonily back.

  ‘Look.’ Amerotke gestured at Heby. ‘He protests his innocence. Why should he kill his master so openly and thus entrap himself?’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t realise he would be caught.’ Valu couldn’t keep the spite out of his voice.

  ‘Not so.’ Amerotke shook his head. ‘My lord prosecutor, if Heby was going to kill General Suten, he would plan, he would have to go out into the Red Lands to collect the vipers, hide them away in his master’s house and seize his opportunity. If I follow your argument, Lord Valu, Heby is not irrational or impetuous but a single-minded cold-blooded killer, so I return to my original question. If he was going to kill his master, why didn’t he take more care to look after himself? Moreover,’ Amerotke pointed to Lady Lupherna, ‘we have the question of the poppy seed. It could be argued that Heby placed an opiate in his master’s drink, but we do have the evidence of his wife, which can be corroborated by Lord Impuki at the Temple of Isis, that General Suten needed such poppy juice to ease the cramps in his belly as well as relax his heart.’

  Amerotke paused and stared out of the window. The sky was turning a fiery red, the sun sinking fast, the shadows lengthening; the breeze had shifted, bringing in the smells from the river. I should be going home, Amerotke thought wistfully, to play with my children and sit on my own roof terrace.

  ‘My lord, will there be a judgement?’

  Amerotke watched a wood pigeon, its thick, heavy wings fluttering slowly, glide over the lawn.

  ‘My lord?’ Valu repeated.

  ‘The case will be deferred,’ Amerotke replied. ‘Heby is to be placed under house arrest at General Suten’s mansion. If he tries to leave he will be taken to the House of Chains. He will stay there whilst I investigate further. The case will be brought back to me within two days.’ He raised his hand at the clamour which had broken out at the back of the court. Shufoy and Asural immediately left, and Amerotke realised a court usher must have brought an urgent message. ‘The business of this court is done,’ he declared swiftly, then he rose and left the Chair of Judgement.

  ‘You’d best come down to the House of Chains.’ Valu had followed Amerotke back into his chamber. ‘You heard the clamour in the court, which is why your retainers left. Those two women you sentenced to life in a prison oasis, one has murdered the other, strangled her with chains.’

  ‘What?’ Amerotke put the flail and rod down on the cedar-wood table.

  ‘I know.’ Valu rubbed his bald head. ‘One trouble after another, my lord judge. Oh, by the way, I still think Heby is a murderer.’

  Amerotke didn’t reply, but went to the door and called for Shufoy and Asural. He told them to guard his chamber and followed Valu out along the corridors to the rear of the temple, down flights of stairs and into a gloomy narrow passageway. This was lit here and there by a dancing torch which revealed heavy doors on either side, securely bolted, with small grilles high up. The stone floor had been washed with crushed herbs but the place still smelt rank and fetid. Leading off the passageway were small chambers where the guards gathered.

  The appearance of Amerotke and Valu immediately brought everyone to attention. The Keeper of the Chains came hurrying up, glistening with sweat which dampened the black leather jerkin he wore. He grasped a torch from the wall sconce and led them further down a set of steps into what he called the Am-duat, the Underworld. It was hot and stinking like some animal cage. Halfway down an ill-lit tunnel, the Keeper of the Chains paused and unlocked a door, ushering Valu and Amerotke into the blackness. Torches were hastily lit to illuminate what was nothing more than a stone box which reeked like a latrine pit. It contained earthenware pots, bowls and two cot beds. On one of these sprawled the corpse of a woman, her dirty face almost masked by thick black hair; another woman in a soiled scanty linen robe slouched sullenly on the floor. She kept her head down. Amerotke glimpsed gleaming eyes in the tangled mess of her hair.

  Valu found the stench offensive; he would have leaned against the wall but hastily withdrew his hand in disgust at the slime there. ‘I cannot talk here,’ he protested. ‘Bring the prisoner to the place of questioning.’ He swept out of the cell.

  Amerotke crossed to the bed, pulled back the hair of the corpse and touched the gruesome marks around the throat. He turned the body over, flinching at the stench. The dead woman’s face was an ugly mask contorted by her death throes. Amerotke raised his hand and touched the chains fastened to the wall which had been used to strangle her.

  ‘You did this?’

  The woman sitting in the corner nodded. ‘I had to.’ Her voice was soft and girlish. She pushed back her hair; bruises marked her cheeks and lips, evidence of how the gaolers had used her for their own pleasure. ‘I had to,’ she repeated. ‘She said if she was freed she would go back to the Sebaus, silly bitch!’ She spat the words out. ‘They would have killed me and her.’

  Amerotke snapped his fingers at the Keeper of the Chains. ‘Bring her up.’

  A short while later Amerotke and Valu, seated behind a table in the place of questioning, stared across at the prisoner. She had tied her hair back and been given a filthy wrap to cover her nakedness. She squatted on a stool and gazed stony-eyed at them. Amerotke found it hard to imagine that once she’d been a beautiful prostitute in a famous house of pleasure in western Thebes.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘You know my name, judge. It is Sithia.’ The woman gazed round the room. The guards had been told to leave. Only the bloody table in the corner, as well as the chains and implements of torture hanging from hooks on the wall, gave any indication of what happened here.

  Amerotke was distracted by the dire warnings some scribe of the stake had painted on the plastered walls: This is a place where the Flame of Truth burns all lies, followed by True terror is not the judgement of man but the work of the Devourers of the Underworld. Finally, above the door, In the Place of Annihilation, no criminal survives. He did not like this chamber or what happened here. His task was to sift the evidence, find the truth, give judgement, and, wherever possible, act as compassionately as circumstances would allow. This was truly a place of terror where the questioners and torturers interrogated Pharaoh’s enemies and those brought here for judgement.

  ‘Why did you kill your friend?’ Valu asked.

  ‘She was not my friend. She was my enemy. Anyone who offers to betray me cannot be my friend.’

  ‘We could send you to the wood.’ Valu used the word for execution.

  ‘If she had lived, the Sebaus would have done the job for you.’

  ‘Sithia,’ Amerotke leaned across the table, ‘let’s start from the beginning. The tombs of Pharaohs and their Queens, the sacred Houses of a Million Years, were cruelly plundered in the Valley of Kings. The Eternal Mansions of nobles were violated, the mummies in their caskets were used
as torches to help the plunderers in their work. The treasure they stole cannot be assessed. The Divine One asked me to investigate. I uncovered a web of conspiracy and deceit, one name leading to another. I discovered a coven, a gang, plundering the glories of Egypt. I captured one, a merchant, selling such plunder in the marketplace of Memphis. He was brought here to the House of Chains.’ Amerotke gestured round. ‘In time he confessed and one name led to another, including yours, Sithia, you and your former friend. What was her name?’

  ‘Tifye.’

  ‘Ah yes, Tifye. Now both of you should have been condemned to death with the rest, but you had words with Lord Valu. You promised, after the trial, to tell the truth about the conspiracy, in return for which your sentence would be commuted and, if the information was truly valuable, you might even be set free. We made no such offer to any of the other conspirators because we thought they would not tell us the truth or had nothing to offer. You two, however, worked in a house of pleasure. You knew more than the rest. You hinted at this, and the Divine One believed your offer was sincere. Lord Valu here and I planned to come down here and listen to what you’d tell us, then make a decision.’

  ‘Yet you killed your companion,’ Valu drawled. ‘You committed murder.’

  ‘Because I’m frightened.’ Sithia sat as if fascinated by the cockroach crawling across the table. She lifted her manacled hands to wave away a fly and wetted her lips. Amerotke rose and gave her a beaker of water. She thanked him with her eyes and drank greedily.

  ‘My lord Valu, you call yourself the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh, and you,’ Sithia pointed at Amerotke, ‘a judge in the Hall of Two Truths, but you haven’t uncovered the conspiracy. You’ve plucked the flower but not the roots. You know nothing! Nothing about the terror! The Sebaus are everywhere; they could even be here in this dark corner. How do you know, my lord Amerotke,’ she pointed at Valu, ‘that he is not one of them? How do I know that you yourself may not be a member of their coven?’ She ignored Valu’s sigh of exasperation. ‘I had to kill my companion. She wanted to confess to mislead you. She would have named innocent people, won her freedom and returned to our masters. She may already have done her damage communicating with one of the guards, gaolers or court ushers. I had no choice.’ Sithia drew a deep breath. ‘I told you nothing before but now I will. I have met Sebaus, I have even seen one or two of their faces. I am speaking now because the rest are dead, their Kas cannot send messages to their master.’

  Amerotke moved uneasily on his stool. He tried to hide his shiver of real fear. He had interrogated men and women, produced a list of names, laid evidence against them and judged them guilty, yet even as he had done so, he had sensed, like an archer who’d loosed his arrow, that he’d missed his mark.

  ‘Tell me, Sithia,’ he urged. ‘Tell me the truth, what you know. You will be freed, taken to another place where you can live again.’

  The woman sat staring at the floor as if listening to the faint sounds from the passageway beyond. She asked for another beaker of water. Amerotke gave her one. He thought she was talking to herself but then noticed how she spread her hands, palm upwards, and realised she was quietly praying.

  ‘The Sebaus,’ she began, ‘are not just a gang of assassins and thieves. True, some are nothing more than peasants, but others are educated men, Egyptians, Kushites, Libyans, even foreigners from the great Green. They are summoned individually and very few know their comrades. They are the ones who actually rob the tombs. They approach the guards and officials in the Necropolis or the Valley of the Kings. They will offer bribes and, if that doesn’t work, threaten blackmail and violence. One official was brought to my house of pleasure. I provided him with everything he wanted, I gave him an ounou of silver to spend and he was in their power. A few men couldn’t be bribed; they were swiftly despatched. The Sebaus raid the tombs and bring the treasure to houses like mine. We would be given strict instructions to hand it to this merchant or that. The people who came,’ she waved her hand, ‘Canaanites, Hittites, sand-dwellers, Libyans, Egyptians, they would buy the treasure and take it away.’ She lifted her head. ‘Some of them seemed very powerful, rich men, others just messengers. They always came in disguise.’

  Amerotke nodded. He had discovered the same: treasures being mysteriously taken into the city then out on to barges, either north to the Delta or south into Kush.

  ‘The Sebaus,’ he said, ‘may be violent and ruthless, but many of the tombs are hidden away, their entrances concealed; some even contain traps. Where do they get such knowledge?’

  ‘The Sebaus only carry out orders,’ Sithia replied. ‘They are given the time and the place and told where to take the treasure. The same person who organises them will send a message to this merchant or that, how a statute, a cornelian necklace or a jewelled gorget can be bought, and the merchant will visit my house or some other.’

  ‘Who gives the orders?’ Valu demanded.

  ‘No one ever knew,’ Sithia replied. ‘One of the Sebaus was much taken with me and, in his cups, told me his leader’s name, or at least his title: the Khetra.’

  ‘Khetra.’ Amerotke echoed the title given to the Watchman of the Third Division of the Underworld. He pushed back his stool and came round and crouched in front of the woman. He ignored the foul smell and gently touched the bruise on her cheek.

  ‘So, the Sebaus would raid a tomb and bring the treasure to a place like yours? A merchant would buy it, pay the price and take it away?’

  Sithia nodded.

  Amerotke went back to sit behind the table. ‘But that leaves two problems. The first is who gave the information about the tombs and what each contained. Secondly, some of these treasures have been taken beyond Egypt’s borders. Now, Sithia, you know that is very dangerous. It is easy to transport the gold statue of a former Pharaoh to Memphis, or to Avaris, but across Sinai? Even if you hide it away in a jar on a pack pony or in a bundle of cloth you are running a terrible risk. You have to pass customs posts, border guards, not to mention desert patrols.’

  Sithia smiled bleakly. ‘Now you know why I’m terrified, Lord Amerotke. Some of the merchants who visited me told me that they would take their goods from the soil of Egypt. I asked them how, and they just laughed and said they had passes.’

  Amerotke ignored Valu’s sharp intake of breath. Sithia had put her finger on the heart of the problem. Only high-ranking officials, men like himself, chief scribes in the various houses of the palace or high priests in the temples, possessed imperial seals which allowed travellers to pass unhindered across Egypt’s borders. Such seals were not personalised but were simply copies of the imperial cartouche.

  ‘Have you reached the same conclusion as I have?’ Sithia asked softly. ‘This Khetra must be a member of the Divine House. Perhaps even a member of the Royal Circle. So who is he, Lord Amerotke? Or she? I didn’t commit murder,’ she continued breathlessly. ‘I killed in self-defence. The Sebaus are totally ruthless. If someone like myself stole a pearl or a scarab from the treasure horde, sentence of death would always be passed. I’ve heard of men and women being scourged, bound and tossed into a crocodile pool. Others are taken out to the Red Lands and buried alive. A merchant who didn’t pay the full price as promised lost two of his children and, when he did pay, was only given their corpses in return.’ Sithia moved the hair from her face. ‘One of the guards who pleasured me told me what happened to you, Amerotke, about the attack in this very temple at Ma’at.’

  ‘Do you think that was revenge?’

  Sithia smiled, wincing at the cut on the corner of her mouth. ‘Oh yes, it’s revenge. They will kill you, Lord Amerotke, for the same reason as they would kill me. You might not realise it but you know something you shouldn’t, and for that you have to die.’

  Valu made a dismissive sound with his fingers.

  ‘Do you think your title will save you, Lord Prosecutor?’ Sithia, clearly enjoying herself, drank greedily from the cup. Amerotke noticed she kept touching her stomach and leaning sli
ghtly to the left.

  ‘Have you ever heard of the Shardana?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s the name for a mercenary,’ Valu replied.

  ‘No, the Shardana,’ she repeated. ‘He was an officer in the mercenary corps. He was court-martialled for stealing from the regimental chest and discharged from the army. He became a high-ranking member of the Sebaus. I was one of the few who knew his identity. The Shardana wasn’t an Egyptian, but came from the lands north of the Hittites. He had fair hair, one eye—’

  ‘I remember him,’ Amerotke interrupted. ‘He appeared before me in the Hall of Two Truths; he killed a man, but claimed it was self-defence.’

  ‘He was an assassin,’ Sithia replied, ‘who would enforce the Khetra’s wishes. A bully boy and a braggart. He often visited my house of pleasure and insisted on taking two girls together. He was coarse and rough but paid well. I never allowed him to be with me. One night he became involved in an argument with another customer. Knives were drawn and the Shardana cut the man’s throat. He was drunk so he couldn’t escape. There were plenty of witnesses. The Medjay arrived and arrested him.’

  ‘Yes, he appeared before me in the second week of the Season of the Sowing.’ Amerotke mused. ‘He should have been sent to the wood but claimed self-defence and said he could produce witnesses. He hired an advocate, one of the most expensive in Thebes, a priest lawyer from the Temple of Thoth.’