‘Did you know General Suten well?’ Amerotke decided to draw Omendap into conversation.
‘I spoke for him in court, of course I did.’
Amerotke drew a fan from beneath his robe and gently wafted cooling air over himself.
‘I’ll be blunt,’ he declared. ‘His death is a mystery.’ He paused. ‘Is it possible Suten brought those snakes on to the roof terrace to confront his own fears, as a soldier who is frightened of water will immerse himself to overcome his terrors?’
‘It’s possible!’ Omendap scratched his cheek with the tip of his gold-tipped swagger stick. ‘Suten was very brave, always in the lead in the chariot charge, the first to bring down an enemy. In battle he was ferocious as a panther. He often expressed his disgust at the nightmares he suffered.’
‘And his wife?’
‘He dearly loved, and was loved by, the Lady Lupherna.’
‘And Heby?’
‘You can find the same in any general’s household, an honest, loyal valet.’
‘And the scribe Menna?’
‘A good quartermaster, a soldier himself, totally devoted to his master. A man of little intelligence, mind you. Suten was always recommending Menna for promotion.’ Omendap snorted. ‘Menna always failed his exams. A good, stolid man with little imagination.’
Amerotke peered through the line of soldiers. He glimpsed a black-garbed figure, but dismissed this as a figment of his imagination.
‘Is the prisoner safe? You know we captured one?’
‘Oh, I know all about him. Asural will look after him. Don’t forget, Amerotke, Captain Asural once served with me. I had a hand in his appointment to the temple. Suten was no different; a born leader, he looked after his men even after they retired. He organised an old fraternity of veterans; Nadif, the Medjay officer who was the first to be summoned when Suten was killed, was a member of this group. There are such gatherings all over Thebes. They meet to feast, to recall the glory days, they pay their dues and club together to construct tombs in the Necropolis.’ Omendap raised a hand. ‘I’ll recall their name in a minute. Ah yes, they call themselves the Heti.’
‘That’s the word for smoke.’
‘That’s how these old soldiers see themselves: the fire has gone out but the smoke remains, here today and gone tomorrow. Well, my lord judge, you must be pleased to be returning home.’
‘Not yet.’ Amerotke grasped Omendap’s arm. ‘First I want to visit Suten’s house. No, don’t object, it’s time I saw the place where he died.’
Omendap couldn’t refuse. They turned west through the dusty, palm-fringed money-changers’ quarter and out through the Gate of Ivory. They followed the avenue along the Nile, through the shabby, sun-baked villages of peasants and artisans and on to the thoroughfare which swept between the river and the city walls to the Mansions of the Mighty. When they reached Suten’s palatial residence they quickly gained entrance through the well-guarded gates into a lush garden which reminded Amerotke of his own, with its green coolness, fountains, pools, herb gardens and shrubs. More soldiers stood inside, sheltering in the arbours, pavilions and groves. Amerotke recalled his own order: Heby was under house arrest; these soldiers would make sure he did not leave.
Menna came striding down the garden path to greet them. He was dressed in a knee-length robe with a coloured cape about his shoulders, his thick black hair cropped just above his ears. Up close Amerotke could study the sturdy peasant face, hard eyes, determined mouth and jutting chin. Behind him Heby danced from foot to foot, eyes and face anxious, which probably accounted for the food stains on his robe. Menna bowed, welcoming Amerotke to the house, and explained that Lady Lupherna had retired to her own chambers and been given a sleeping draught by her physician. Amerotke returned the greeting, refused the offer of refreshment and demanded to be taken to the roof terrace. Menna led him through the hall of audience; despite the coloured pillars and frescoes, elegant furniture and tassled cushions, it all seemed rather gloomy. Beyond it lay a small passageway leading to a kitchen and, through a doorway on the left, the staircase to the roof terrace. Amerotke paused at the bottom step.
‘Who was here the night Suten died?’
‘I was in my writing office. Lady Lupherna kept coming in and out from the hall of audience on this task and the other. Heby guarded the stairs.’
Amerotke nodded and climbed the steps. At the top he flinched at the heat. The roof terrace was deserted except for a few remaining pieces of furniture. It was a huge square, the edge of the roof bounded by a small protective wall and on top of this, as was customary, a sturdy acacia-wood fence about three feet high, sure protection against anyone falling over. Leaving the rest at the top of the steps, Amerotke slowly walked round the terrace. He could see there was no gap in the trellis fence, no adjoining building; the roof looked down only on to lush gardens. He grasped the fence and looked over. There were windows below, but each one was covered by a grill; neither could anyone have hoisted a sack of horned vipers up on to the roof. He walked very slowly around the perimeter again and tried to visualise it on the night Suten had died. There would have been furniture: tables, chairs and stools; he could tell from marks on the floor where the bed had been. There would have been posts at each corner of this, over which linen drapes could be hung as protection against the dust and flies.
‘Tell me,’ Amerotke called, standing where he was sure the bed had been. ‘General Suten was here, sitting on his bed?’
‘Lying on the floor next to it,’ Menna called back. ‘The snakes were curling all about him, there was very little we could do.’
Amerotke walked back.
‘The night was cool?’
‘Yes, my lord. There was a brazier, chafing dishes if General Suten wanted to warm his fingers.’ Menna’s hard face broke into a smile. ‘But the general always prided himself on being tough. A man who had withstood the freezing cold nights of the desert, and its heat.’
‘There was food and wine?’
‘Oh yes,’ the scribe answered. ‘We had all eaten here beforehand; dishes of fruit were left. Why, my lord?’
‘For sake of argument,’ Amerotke pointed to the steps, ‘if Heby had brought the snakes and released them here at the top of the steps, where would they have gone?’
‘Why?’ Menna scratched his head.
‘They wouldn’t have gone straight to the general,’ Amerotke declared. ‘They weren’t Libyan marauders but snakes, taken from their pit and released in a strange place. The night was cold, perhaps it was some time since they had eaten.’
‘They would have gone towards the heat and food.’ Shufoy spoke up. ‘That’s what they always do in a house. Snakes coil near the hearth or over a dish of food. They only attack when they are disturbed.’
Amerotke patted the little man on the shoulder.
‘Which means,’ the judge continued, ‘the snakes must have been taken directly over to General Suten. Now, if he was awake he would protest, object, raise the alarm. So he must have been asleep. If,’ he added with a sigh, ‘that’s what happened.’
‘Or?’ Menna asked.
‘Or,’ Amerotke conceded, ‘the general knew all about the snakes because he brought them up here himself. When the roof terrace was deserted, he decided to confront his own terrors and release them. It may sound foolish to us, but a man suffering from a nightmare may do the most extraordinary things.’
Menna shook his head. ‘But that’s impossible!’
‘Why?’
‘General Suten came up here for dinner, he finished, the lamps were lit and we went downstairs.’
‘But not before most of the food was cleared and the roof terrace, as usual, searched for snakes?’
‘Yes,’ Menna nodded. ‘But you see, my lord Amerotke, as far as I can recollect, General Suten never left the roof terrace, he never went downstairs to bring up a strange-looking sack. Moreover, when we searched the roof terrace, we found nothing. So either Heby brought up that sack on General Suten�
�s orders, which I know he didn’t, or he brought it up of his own accord.’
‘Or,’ Shufoy was determined not to be silenced, ‘somehow the general had hidden the sack away on the roof terrace.’
‘Impossible!’ Menna snapped.
Amerotke shaded his eyes against the sun. It was now mid-afternoon; the heat was intense, not even a whisper of a breeze. He stared across this place of death. Once again he decided to walk the perimeter, holding on to the trellis fence. He was approaching the place where the bed had stood, not far from the perimeter wall, when his hand brushed a piece of stout cord which had been wound round one of the trellis posts. He stared at it curiously. The cord was the toughest twine, the knot tied tightly, but the rest had been cut away. He leaned over the fence and peered down at the cluster of bushes and shrubs below, then returned to examine the cord. It was still fresh, slightly slippery, its oil not yet dried out by the weather.
‘What is this?’ he called across to Menna.
‘What have you found?’ Menna came across.
Amerotke tapped the upright post, then stood back, spreading his hands. ‘The general’s bed stood here, protected by its linen drapes. Is it possible that General Suten did decide to face his fears? Only the gods know how, and I will have to reflect further on this, but did the general obtain a sack of horned vipers in order to confront the terrors which plagued his soul once and for all? It is possible that, earlier on the day he died, General Suten brought a sack here, lowered it over the edge of the roof and tied the cord to this wooden post. No one could see it from the garden below, where there are only shrubs and bushes, no lawns or pools of purity; a deserted part of the grounds. The general did not alert anyone to what he was planning. A soldier, he followed the usual routine of having the place searched, but once the roof terrace was cleared, he drew the sack up, cut the cord around its neck and released the snakes.’
‘But we found no sack,’ Menna insisted.
‘Not yet.’ Amerotke walked back across the roof terrace and shouted down the stairs. ‘General Omendap! I would be grateful if you could organise your men to search the bushes and shrubs on the far side of the roof terrace. They are looking for a leather sack.’
‘A sack? Are you sure?’ Omendap queried.
‘Yes,’ came the reply. ‘I think I know how General Suten died!’
HESBET: ancient Egyptian, ‘a reckoning’
CHAPTER 6
Darkness had fallen. The flies danced around the lamps. A breeze rattled the shutters over the windows and set the candle flames dancing. The garden outside had fallen silent, although now and again the croaking of the frogs welled up in harsh chorus. Amerotke picked up the flower Norfret had placed on his writing desk and sniffed appreciatively at its lovely perfume. On any other occasion he would have composed a poem; the opening lines of one came like some invited guest into his mind, and he spoke it aloud:
‘Hasten now my heart and do not falter on its way.’
He had to keep up appearances, although Norfret was not fooled. They had already quietly decided that tomorrow morning she and their two sons would accept the Divine One’s offer to shelter in the palace precincts.
Amerotke leaned back, pulling his white robe more closely around him. He had returned to find his house well guarded, yet Norfret had taken him down along the garden paths to the whitewashed shrine in the cypress grove, a small temple containing a statue of the goddess Ma’at. Amerotke hadn’t entered; instead he had gazed in mounting fear at the sinister figure scrawled crudely in charcoal on the shrine wall, a man kneeling holding a bow. The drawing had a macabre power all of its own, as if it were ready to stand, leave the wall and wreak devastation in the heart of Amerotke’s paradise.
Despite Norfret’s pleas, Amerotke had given way to a fit of rage. Taking water from a nearby pool, he’d tried to wash the drawing off, but ended crouched against the wall, sweat dripping off him. Shufoy had come and quietly taken over, ordering servants to scrub the blasphemy away, whilst Amerotke had returned to the house to thank General Omendap and make his farewells. Norfret couldn’t tell him when the drawing had first appeared, though Amerotke suspected it had been done before members of the Sacred Band had taken up guard around the walls of his house.
His two sons had been delighted to see him, totally unaware of the danger which threatened them. They’d jumped up and down, begging their father to play a game of senet. He had given in to their entreaties, allowing both the boys to win against their father.
‘It wasn’t difficult,’ he confessed to Norfret as Shufoy led the children off to play a game of wild goose in the garden. ‘It wasn’t difficult at all. I was barely aware of playing the game!’
Amerotke had retired to his bedchamber, slept a while and celebrated the evening meal with his family on the roof terrace. Shufoy had once again kept the boys distracted before leading them away for bed.
The Chief Judge of the Hall of True Truths sighed, gazed around, and glanced at the sack lying next to his feet. One of Omendap’s men had found it beneath a bush; its dark brown colour had kept it hidden among the all-concealing shoots of the shrubbery. Amerotke picked it up, along with the piece of twine found inside, the same type of cord that had been tied round the trellis post on the roof of Suten’s house. He could see where the knife had sliced through it. He pulled open the sack and sniffed its fetid odour. The coarse texture of the inside still bore minute pieces of scaled skin which must have fallen off as the horned vipers coiled there. On the outside were traces of white dust, the occasional thorn and tenacious leaf, ample proof that the sack must have hung for a while against the outside wall of the house before being brought up, the snakes loosed and the sack thrown over the fence into the garden below.
Amerotke had gone down to the garden, and a soldier had shown him the exact place where he had found the sack. Looking back up at the roof of the house, Amerotke could imagine General Suten bringing the sack up earlier in the day, hanging it over the side of the roof parapet and lashing it by the cord to the wooden post. All the servants had maintained that very few people entered that part of the garden. The sack would have hung low whilst the cord would have been concealed by the drapes around the general’s bed canopy. Suten, determined to confront his fears, had let the sack hang there until the evening meal was finished. Afterwards, taking a deep draught of wine laced with poppy juice to steady his nerve, he had pulled the sack up, released the snakes and thrown the empty sack into the garden below.
General Omendap had been surprised, yet accepted the logic of Amerotke’s conclusion.
‘I’ve done the same myself,’ he confessed. ‘Deliberately created danger so I know how to confront it.’
Menna, however, had been speechless, shaking his head in disbelief. Heby had cried in relief, whilst Lady Lupherna, disturbed by the noise, had come hastening down, heavy-eyed, to see what was happening. The sack had been carefully examined time and again until Amerotke had pronounced himself satisfied. General Suten’s household had been overjoyed, clapping their hands, servants thronging about, although Chief Scribe Menna and Lady Lupherna were still shocked and unbelieving. However, Amerotke had demanded that Heby must remain under house guard and appear before his court the day after next so the royal prosecutor could hear the evidence and the case be formally dismissed.
At first Amerotke had been very pleased with himself, but as he left the house, he felt a little uneasy at what he had discovered. Was it Menna’s disbelief? Had he overlooked something? Or was it just his own tiredness? Perhaps it had been that old porter who, as Amerotke approached the main gate, grasped the judge’s hand and said how sad he was that General Suten had died. How quiet and withdrawn his master had been for weeks before the event.
‘I was a soldier,’ the old porter chewed on his toothless gums, ‘a member of the Menfyt.’ He referred to the shock troops who stiffened the Egyptian battle line. ‘I served General Suten’s father, and would have been a beggar, but the general saw me in the street a
nd told me I could be porter here until my dying day. Now, wasn’t he a good and true gentleman? And yet,’ the wizened old veteran shook his head, ‘sometimes so sad, so sad.’
Amerotke had nodded understandingly, gently prised loose the old man’s talon-like fingers, bade him farewell and continued on to his own mansion.
Now he brushed a bead of sweat away from his forehead and smelt the tips of his fingers, savouring the delicious perfume Norfret had anointed him with just before the evening meal. She was now busying herself deciding what things should be taken, whilst he lurked here in what he jokingly referred to as his hephet, his cavern of writing. He must have sat for an hour at least, watching the wicks in their bowls of oil float in the breeze as he tried to make sense of what had happened, recalling everything he had seen and heard. He picked up the sack still draped across his knees, folded it carefully and put it under his chair, then grasped the sharpened quill, brought a lamp closer and began to write carefully on the papyrus stretched out before him, held smooth and firm by the little weights placed on each corner.
The tomb robbers - he had learnt a bitter lesson. Two days ago, despite a few reservations, he thought he had resolved this case, but he had simply turned over the nest and the hornets were now busy around him. Who are they? Amerotke carefully drew the question mark. The gang of thieves, that horde of ruffians who called themselves the Sebaus, were controlled by the Khetra, the Watchman, a powerful, mysterious figure who knew all about the hidden tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Queens, their secret entrances, their false passageways and, above all, the treasures they contained. He could imagine the Sebaus slipping through the valley, forcing their way in and removing the treasures. Many had tried this before, but only the most knowledgeable realised where to go and what they could plunder. Amerotke had studied all such tomb robberies, going back decades, and whenever they happened, some high-ranking official was always involved. The Sebaus, however, were different. They would not only remove treasures, but had the power to move them along the Nile and across Egypt’s borders. Such power could only come from the Khetra, a man who must be surrounded by the paraphernalia of high office. Who could it be? Someone like Impuki, a high priest, well known to the myriads who flocked to his temple for solace and relief? The Temple of Isis possessed an extensive library and archives which housed all sorts of secrets, whilst a man like Impuki also held the cartouche, the imperial seal of Egypt. He could organise a string of pack animals to cross Sinai, their burdens sealed against any inspection. Moreover, Mafdet had been Impuki’s man. Amerotke could only accept the High Priest’s word that he and the captain of the guard had disliked each other. Neverthless Mafdet had been barbarously slaughtered at the heart of the temple and his house burnt to the ground. Was that an act of vengeance, retribution, punishment?
The Assassins of Isis Page 12
