by Diana Wilder
“Since I'm not under your command, I'm not obliged to obey you,” Ptahemhat pointed out with a touch of defiance, “And His Grace told me what he thought I should know.”
“As the commander of the Army force for this Province, my lad,” Khonsu said, “and as the officer who is directing the investigation of a murder, my authority supersedes yours and General Seti's. The next time I give you an order, it had better be obeyed.”
Ptahemhat stiffened and scowled at Khonsu, but then surprised him by suddenly grinning. “Oh, all right. I'm sorry. I was out of line and His Grace told me so, too. He clipped my ears, in fact, and insisted that I apologize: which I do now, sincerely. But there was no harm done, and His Grace was glad to see me. And besides, His Grace didn't seem worried to me.”
“His Grace wasn't worried because His Grace is an idiot!” Sennefer snapped.
Ptahemhat's expression hardened. “I won't have you or anyone else speaking of His Grace like that, Sennefer. You don't need to worry about him. He knows what he's doing, and he's confident everything will work out.”
“Is that what he told you?” Khonsu asked.
“Yes, Commander.”
“I see,” said Khonsu. “Did he explain anything to you?”
Ptahemhat shook his head. “His Grace never explains things, Commander. He just told me not to ask questions he couldn't answer. He's been saying that to me since I came to his household as a child after my father died.”
Khonsu's habitual smile stiffened. “You say he often uses that turn of phrase?” he said.
“Yes, Commander,” Ptahemhat replied. “Always. It's useless to coax or plead with him, because he never says anything more after that.”
Khonsu released his breath in a sigh. “That's interesting to hear. And it's gratifying to learn that His Grace isn't uneasy. For myself, I can't stop worrying, and I don't see any way out.”
“Forget it, Commander,” Ptahemhat said. “When His Grace says all will be well, he's usually right. He doesn't take unnecessary risks: he scouts the situation, formulates a strategy, and then follows it. If he needs to change, he can think on his feet like every other soldier.”
Khonsu had been listening with half his attention. He blinked, swung round and stared at Ptahemhat. “Did you say he'd been a soldier?” he demanded.
“I'm sure of it. I asked him once if he had been in the armies, and his reply was to tell me not to ask questions he couldn't answer.”
“Well, then,” Sennefer began.
“Wait. Lord Nebamun knew my father, and they were good enough friends for him to take my mother and me into his household after my father died. But I'd never met His Grace until then, and my father had never been to the temple of Ptah. He was a career officer in the royal army, and had been since he was a boy. The only way that my father and Lord Nebamun could have met was through the army.”
Khonsu was listening with his brows knit. “I...see.”
“And there's something else you may not know,” Ptahemhat said. “Master Mersu tells me he knew both my father and His Grace for many years.”
“That's impossible!” Sennefer snorted. “Mersu only came to the temple ten years ago! He was at Akhmin before that!”
“Nevertheless, that's what he has often told me when he was in his cups.” He smiled back at Khonsu. “But when I asked Lord Nebamun, he said they were issues he isn't allowed to discuss, so I just left them alone. He says all will be well, and I believe him. Now, Commander: may I go back to my men?”
“Go with my blessing,” Khonsu said, but absently. When Ptahemhat started to leave, he stopped him. “Wait. Do you recall where Paser was going, what he was doing during the week before his death?”
Ptahemhat considered before answering. “I had him watched during the week before he was caught stealing. I thought he was dangerous. He spent a lot of time exploring the northeast cliffs, where the tombs are said to be. Once he was reduced in the ranks and under your control, I didn't think it necessary.”
“The northern cliffs, you say?”
“Yes, Commander,” Ptahemhat replied. “He spent a long time driving around there, and once or twice he remained after it grew dark and my scouts couldn't see him any more.”
“Thank you, Ptahemhat.”
Ptahemhat smiled, bowed to Khonsu, and left.
“Insolent puppy!” Sennefer snorted. “He has no manners! I remember circumcising him!”
Khonsu felt a twinge of laughter, which he sternly repressed. “He's no longer the boy you circumcised. Tell me, Master Physician. When did Lord Nebamun come to the temple of Ptah?”
“Almost twenty-five years ago, by all reports,” said Sennefer. “It was in the second year of the reign of Tutankhamun.”
“Tutankhaten,” Khonsu mused.
** ** **
“If you think it may shed some light, Commander,” Seti said later as they drove together through the Northern Sentinels and took the wide branch of path that led toward the northern track, “then I won't object. But this may turn out to be a waste of time.”
“It may,” Khonsu said, shaking out the reins and urging his horses to a trot. “But I can't ignore the inkling, and if I'm right we may have a way out of our dilemma.”
“And if you're wrong, we'll both look fools,” Seti remarked. “I remember the last time we went this way: we ended up being soaked and humiliated.”
“We were led into a trap,” Khonsu said, guiding his team through the spot where the hooded driver had raced past them. “And I suspect it was a trap meant to divert us from something.”
He reined his team in and frowned up along the cliffs. It was not far from there that his horses had bolted on the afternoon he had encountered Nebamun and had visited the tomb of Akhenaten.
“We're almost there,” he said. “There's a place where the cliffs rise from a completely level area, and they're riddled with paths.”
“What are we looking for?” Seti demanded.
Khonsu was still frowning at the cliffs. “We're looking for a tomb,” he said.
XLI Among The Tombs
The wind sang through high valleys at the northern end of the city with the sound of distant, quiet voices. The cliffs, rising straight and stark from the level floor, seemed a forest of pillars threaded with narrow alleyways that served as a natural channel for the runoff of water from the area's infrequent but heavy rains. The water-borne debris had choked the paths in places; Khonsu could see the high water marks of old floods as he looked up along the straight-sided rise..
The water stains and rubble helped to disguise the carefully hidden openings of Akhet-Aten's tombs, but Khonsu's eyes caught some irregularities in the rock that seemed man-made. And yet he knew they were not what he was seeking. It had to be somewhere close by. He had been in that area three times and been stopped each time. Now he thought he knew why.
He was standing on the same spot where he had watched his horses bolting back to the city. He raised his head and looked down into the valley along the road leading back to Akhet-Aten. If he turned left and climbed the steep incline, he would reach the northern path, where he had encountered Lord Nebamun. And why would Nebamun have—
His thoughts were interrupted by a shout from Seti.
“Here! I've found something!”
Khonsu scrambled down the incline to the floor of the cleft. “Where are you?”
“Over here! There's a pathway opening to your left!”
Khonsu followed the sound of his voice and found Seti standing by a tall column of rock and staring at some dark marks on the stone. “Blood?”
“It could be nothing else,” said Seti. “Here's a partial handprint. See, the thumb, here, and the index and middle fingers beside it. The right hand. About shoulder level on me, maybe a little lower. And, see this smear, here.” He touched another mark that lay over a foot below it, “Also blood, but I think it came from whatever was injured: there was more of it. It was probably wet at the time because the mark is stronger.”
Khonsu eyed the smudges. “A man with two wounds, maybe? Where was he coming from?” He set his right hand over the bloody handprint, turned, and looked down the path. “There's more that way. As though the man bumped up against these sheer walls more than once.”
They followed the pathway on its upward slope, reaching a sharp, high cleft in the rock perhaps thirty paces along. The cleft was bracketed with what at first appeared to be chunks of broken rock, but turned out to be broken pieces of plaster that had once been tinted to match the surrounding rock.
Seti and Khonsu traded glances. Moments later they were holding lighted torches. Seti passed through the break first. Khonsu followed and stepped into a world of silent color and motion where mourners raised their hands to cover their faces, where a procession of attendants carrying grave-goods wound its way around three of the four walls, finishing against a wall depicting a feast.
Seti was standing in the middle of a scene of fantastic disarray, gazing disgustedly around, his fist on his hip. The room, which appeared to be an antechamber, was a shambles of broken stone and splintered wood. Pieces of richly ornamented furniture, beds, chairs, chests, all inlaid with gold and costly stones, had been smashed to allow the removal of the precious parts. Chests lay open and rifled, jars unstoppered and tossed aside.
Khonsu lifted his eyes from the destruction to gaze again at the wall carvings. Crisp and clear, painted with colors as vibrant as jewels. faces of individuals emerged with clarity and understanding, as though the artists had been personally acquainted with the mourners.
“Come through and look over here,” Seti called from beyond the doorway. “There's another room beyond this one. This tomb's a masterpiece!”
Khonsu crossed the threshold and found himself gazing upon a scene of banqueting. Guests, clad for a gala feast, sat before tables laden with food of wondrous variety. Dates, dozens of types of breads, sweets, roasted meats and fowl, vegetables of all sorts, wine and beer. Servants moved among the throng, adjusting floral collars, offering wine, placing cones of perfume on the guests' heads. The almost palpable sense of happiness and enjoyment contrasted with the dismal disorder of the chamber.
Khonsu toed a piece of broken pottery aside and frowned at the spatters of blood speckling the floor below it. “This wasn't all caused by thieves in search of loot,” he said. He raised his head and looked across the room at another mark on the wall.
“Someone came up hard against that spot,” he said. “Breast height, and it looks as though he were wounded. Chest, hand, hip, judging from the height of the bloodstains. But none at the level of a man's head, which was where Paser was struck. Could there have been more than one assailant?”
He looked away from the blood and back at the feast. The host and his wife sat at the center of the scene, smiling and happy, their arms about each other. To Khonsu's eyes there was something familiar about the face of the host. But even more compelling were the names written on the walls in beautifully detailed hieroglyphs.
“Look at these,” he said to Seti. “All the great ones are here.” He read the names aloud: Huya, the Major-Domo of the Dowager Queen Tiy; Merire, Steward of the Queen; Ay, the Fan-Bearer on the King's Right. He became Pharaoh in his turn. Tutu, the Chamberlain of the Lord of the Two Lands; Mahu, the Chief of Police; Ramose, the Granary Overseer, Huy, the Governor of the Palace. He was another Pharaoh, just before Ay. And there were others, names he had heard of as once having been the greatest in the land.
Seti was gazing thoughtfully at the carvings. “The most powerful of them was buried here,” he said quietly. “The Vizier, Nakht. My father often spoke of him. His father was a son of Thutmose IV by a Mittani princess, and Nakht was fostered by his uncle, Pharaoh. He outlived Akhenaten and survived into the first years of his successor, when he fell from power. He was sent here to preside over the dismantling of the city in the second year of the reign of Tutankhamun.”
Khonsu looked back at the blood for a moment. “This is a rich burial for someone in disfavor when he died. He must have had powerful friends willing to ensure that his burial was all it should be.”
“His son was still alive.”
“Yes,” said Khonsu. “Neb-Aten...”He looked around the tomb once more. The far wall, painted with another scene of the tomb-owner and his wife seated side by side, was flanked by life-sized, twin wooden statues of a king whose name had been cut away by swift adze-strokes. One of the statues held a bronze-headed mace in its hand, the other a staff.
A wide stone platter was set on the ground before the portrait. It contained loaves of bread, a garland of flowers that had just begun to fade, and another object wrapped in a twist of cloth.
Seti cast a quick look at the offerings, then bent his attention on the carved portraits. “Look Commander. Time is arrested here. Here's Nakht's son, Neb-Aten—our ghost—sitting beneath his parents' chair and holding his cat. He's caught forever in this moment of childhood. And yet, he would be older today than we are. How beautifully he's carved!”
Khonsu tipped the child an ironic salute, then looked again at the offerings. “These are fresh. Who could have put them here? I doubt it was the robber.”
He looked around again. “Well,” he said, “The burial seems intact, though it looks like someone took a maul to the wall in several places. They must have been looking for the entrance to the burial chamber itself. It can't be far.” He nodded to the black-painted wooden statues.
“I think they found it,” said Seti, frowning at a portion of painted wall midway to the left. It had been prized away from the rest and was half-hidden behind a basket and a handful of rushes. “This is plaster,” he said. “The entryway to the chamber was blocked and plastered, and then painted to match the limestone of the tomb itself. They hadn't broken through yet.”
Khonsu, moving forward to frown at the wall, pushed aside a box that had been blocking his way. He stopped with an exclamation of surprise. “There's more blood here!” he said.
“What?” said Seti.
“I saw it beneath this box as I shifted it. Here it is: a lot of it, too!”
Seti bent over the stain on the floor, stared, then straightened and looked around with new eyes. “This stool was smashed when someone fell on it,” he said. “And look: there's more blood over here! There was a fight here, all right. But over what? They didn't get into the burial chamber itself, and there was no lack of treasure here.”
“No,” said Khonsu. “No lack at all...”
“I don't pretend to understand the minds of thieves,” Seti remarked, turning away from the blood. “I don't think I ever want to. Whatever they were fighting over, they had enough to keep them busy here for a good long while.” He opened a chest and frowned at a disordered collection of jewelry. “How odd that the thieves didn't take this,” he said. “Could Paser have encountered them, fought them and been killed, and by his death frightened them into leaving the tomb for the time being?”
“I suppose it's possible,” Khonsu admitted. “But I doubt it. Paser was a thief, himself. And don't forget that Nebamun has told us he was the one who killed Paser. I don't think he was lying.”
Seti blinked. “I'd forgotten. I certainly can't imagine Lord Nebamun as a tomb-robber. Maybe Paser wasn't killed here at all...”
“Then we have another murder on our hands. And I don't understand why they left this place in that case. Have you dealt with tomb-robbers? They're a hard-boiled lot, without an ounce of superstition. They'd have had to hear of richer takings somewhere else, and that isn't likely.” He lifted the lid from a plain cedar box as he spoke, pushed the wrappings aside, and then sat back with a gasp.
Seti was bending over the offerings once more. “What is it?” he asked, looking up.
“Silver! More than I have ever seen in my life!” He took out a wide, shallow bowl, rubbed it with the hem of his kilt, and then held it up to the light. “Look here: it's exactly like that cup Paser said he found in the city!”
“
What? Let me see!” Seti frowned at the bowl. “You're right. It must have been made by the same master silversmith. Well!” He broke off, frowning, and turned the salver over in his hands once more. He spoke slowly after a moment, “Could Paser have been one of the robbers? Could Lord Nebamun have caught him in the act, killed him here, and then left him to be found, as he told us?”
Khonsu nodded, but with an odd twist to his mouth. “It's possible. But now we are piling mystery upon mystery. Why was Lord Nebamun here at all?”
Seti lifted the cloth-wrapped object from the offering tray. “I wonder... Robbers came here recently. And someone bringing the sort of offerings usually made by a kinsman. Food and drink, flowers, and this. What is it?” He straightened and unwrapped the object, gazed at it for a long moment, and then wordlessly held it out for Khonsu to see.
It was the cup Paser had found, and which had vanished after his death.
Khonsu looked again at the guardian statues. “'A heavy, blunt instrument'.”
“Yes?” Seti said.
“There was a fight. Between a thief and another. And if what I suspect is correct…” He took the mace from the hand of the statue, examined it, and then handed it to Seti. “It is,” he said. “This was the weapon. There's blood on it. It was replaced after it was used. Is it too far a step to say that whoever left the offerings fought and killed the robber?”
“Not at all,” said Seti, who was still on his knees before the offering table. He sat back on his heels with a frown and looked up at the family. “The Vizier, Prince Nakht, his wife, the Princess Merit'taui, and their son, Neb-Aten.”
“There he sits, just as I thought,” said Khonsu, speaking slowly but with increasing intensity. “Holding his cat in his arms.”
Seti turned and gazed, then lifted his eyes to meet Khonsu's. “Someone stopped a robbery and protected the dead. But who? And why?”
