Scepter of Flint

by N. L. Holmes

  The second store had even fewer select products outside, but within, there were a few pieces of nice furniture. Yes, Maya thought as he drew closer, very nice furniture. Made of precious woods, inlaid with ebony and ivory, carved with birds’ heads and lion paws... they were the sort of thing a very rich man might have seen fit to put in his tomb. Maya had a better view of the chairs and stools than most shoppers would have without stooping, and he liked what he saw. We just need to compare this with Lord Mery-ra’s list, when he gets it.

  The third and final shop seemed to be that of a dealer in old jewelry. A massive servant sat at the door to discourage anyone who might want to dodge in and help himself. He gave Maya a withering look as he entered. Maya adjusted his writing case over his shoulder conspicuously and went strolling in, looking as proud and affluent as possible.

  A little old man emerged from invisibility in the corner of the shop and approached Maya, bowing and clasping his hands obsequiously. “And what can I interest the young gentleman in today?” he chirruped.

  “A gift for my patron,” Maya said, imitating the upper-class drawl of Lord Ptah-mes. “Something rich but not flashy. Something... something suitable for an older man who can buy anything he wants. For his ka house, let’s say.”

  “Ah,” said the merchant. “You’ll want something unique, then.” He returned to his corner and came back with a bundle wrapped in discolored linen. He folded back the wrappings reverently, and Maya looked down at a beautiful masculine bracelet of gold and silver. It was ornamented by two bands of chased writing filled in with blue frit. Among the symbols, Maya saw the word “Sa-tau.” His heart began to thunder until he feared the merchant could hear it.

  “How much is this piece?” Maya asked casually—as if he would ever in his life possess so much wealth.

  “The metal alone weighs more than a deben, my lord, and it’s pure gold, with silver from Kheta Land.” The merchant smiled a toothless grin of pure complaisance. “The workmanship is exquisite, and in addition, it’s very old. Let’s say for you, a man of discrimination, five gold shenas?”

  Maya, who hadn’t grown up in a goldsmith’s studio for nothing, recognized this as a ridiculously low figure. The man clearly wanted to unload it. He probably knows it’s stolen, even if he can’t read the inscription.

  “I’m interested,” Maya said, “but I don’t have that sum on me. I’ll have to come back for it. Can you show me something else old while I’m here?”

  The old man trundled back into his corner once more—the contraband corner, Maya thought caustically—and pulled out a lovely pair of hoop earrings made of a hollow tubelike sheet of beaten gold. They were perfectly simple and elegant in a manly way. What do you bet my mother made them? Very old indeed.

  “Good, good,” Maya said airily at last. “I’ll make a decision and come back.”

  “Shall I hold them for my lord?”

  “No, no. I’m not sure when I’ll return to the city.”

  “Oh, my lord,” cried the merchant in warning. “Pieces this beautiful may not be here when you get back.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Who knows? I may find something more beautiful still,” said Maya, moving toward the door.

  “Wait, my lord. Will you give me five for the bracelet and the earrings?”

  “Sorry,” Maya said with a nonchalant little wave of the fingers, and he strolled toward the door.

  Once out of sight of the doorman, he took off running. Wait till Lord Hani hears about this!

  ⸎

  Hani, mopping the sweat out of his eyes as he sat on the deck of the ferry, was starting to get discouraged by what had turned into a fruitless quest. We probably should have waited for Father’s report on the missing items before we bothered to go looking. He’d encountered nothing he judged to be of a caliber for a rich man’s tomb furnishings, although he’d probed many a faience kohl tube and gilded bronze jug. Either the goods had not been put on the open market, or they hadn’t reached as far as Men-nefer.

  Hani had just emptied his gourd of water, pouring the last few drops over his head, when he saw Maya running as hard as he could toward the boat on his short legs. Hani suppressed the twitch of amusement that tickled at him and jumped up to stand at the gunwales. “What luck, my friend?” he called.

  As he ran up the gangplank, Maya pumped his fists jubilantly. “I found some! One piece even had a name on it!” He dropped, panting, into the shade and stretched his legs out in front of him. Hani took a seat at his side and waited until the secretary had regained his breath. Red-faced and triumphant, his chest still heaving, Maya grinned. “I’m sure I saw some furniture from a rich tomb, and next door, they had several pieces of expensive gold jewelry, which they were selling for nothing. And one bracelet actually had the name Sa-tau on it!”

  Hani laughed with pleasure. “Good for you, my boy. I think we need to steer Sa-tau’s family up here with some soldiers to make an identification and let them regain their lost treasure.” He sat pondering the implications of this find. “I wonder if the merchant innocently bought contraband or if he’s part of the gang.”

  “I don’t know, my lord. It’s altogether possible that Mother could tell us who the pieces were made for, if she had anything to do with making them.”

  “Something to consider. We know now that our mysterious foreigner sold off the treasures, probably to put them into a more portable form than furniture. And less identifiable than jewelry.”

  But gradually Hani fell silent, his exultation starting to cool. The discovery didn’t really prove anything, except that tombs had been robbed. “Get off the boat, Maya,” he said, rising to his feet. “We’re going back to that shop.”

  They clattered back down the gangplank, Maya flashing a look of confusion at his father-in-law.

  “I want to ask those merchants who sold them the goods. Our foreign friend may have colleagues.”

  As quickly as either of them had the energy for, they walked back up through the center of town and into the northern marketplace. Maya pointed out to Hani the two shops where he’d found what seemed to be grave goods. They entered the first under the suspicious eye of the big servant. When the little old merchant rose from his corner, Hani put on an easygoing smile. “Hello, my friend. My colleague here said he saw some jewelry in your shop that may be heirlooms of my family. I’ve been trying to trace them for a long time.”

  “I... I don’t know, my lord. People bring things to me and I resell it. I suppose they’re all heirlooms if you go back far enough.” His filmy eyes flicked from one face to the other, uneasy. Perhaps guilty.

  “Let me ask you, do you remember who sold the gold-and-silver bracelet to you? He probably had other pieces as well.”

  The merchant hesitated, and Hani saw him trying to attract the eye of the guardian at the door.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Hani said reassuringly, but he stepped between the old man and the sight line of the servant. “I just want to find whoever sold my family’s goods.”

  “He was, he was... a foreigner, my lord. From Naharin, I think.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Hani thought triumphantly. “Do you remember what he looked like, my good man?”

  The little old merchant hunched his fleshless shoulders in ignorance. “I can’t see well, my lord. He was... tall. Dressed in blue-green. I can’t see much more than that.”

  “Thin? Fat?”

  The old man shrugged again.

  “You seem to see jewelry well enough to evaluate it,” said Hani with a smile. “Can’t you give us a few more details? Distinguishing marks? Any moles?”

  “Dark hair.”

  “Oh, that’s distinctive,” Maya said dismissively.

  The little man pleaded, “It’s all I can see.”

  Hani exchanged a skeptical look with Maya. “Very well. I was going to buy the pieces if they were my family’s, but if you don’t know where they came from, maybe they’re copies.”

  “Uh, uh...” the me
rchant stammered. “He was fat, my lord.”

  “Thanks, friend,” said Hani dryly. “You at least have an imagination, if not eyes.”

  He and Maya made their way out of the shop under the baleful gaze of the servant and headed back to the quay.

  Once they’d settled themselves once more on the deck, they fell silent. Hani eyed the sky, which was nearly white with the heat of early summer. They’d entered the season of waiting for the Flood. Far off over the bank, a flock of ducks rose heavily then found their rhythm and took to the air with powerful beats of their wings.

  They’re like young people, Hani thought, a little melancholy. It takes them a while to settle into what their nature has equipped them to do. He could remember his own adolescence, which had been permeated with a generic sense of unhappiness—not because anything untoward had ever happened to him. His life had been good, and he’d had the most sympathetic of parents. But the simple fact of turning from a child into an adult was a painful process. A young person tried on so many identities before the true one descended, unsought, upon him. Maybe that’s what Neferet is groping toward. Maybe she’ll move past this stage at some point. But it didn’t matter, as long as she found happiness. Because that was surely the touchstone of having found oneself.

  “Do you believe him, my lord? I mean, that he couldn’t see the man who sold him those things?” Maya asked.

  Hani snapped his thoughts back to the present. “I doubt it. But at least he connected the sales with a Mitannian in a turquoise tunic. Our friend has been busy.”

  “What do we do next, then?” asked Maya as the ferry slid upstream with its broad sail bellying.

  “We urgently need to find Talpu-sharri, but I’m not sure how to go about that. A more manageable task is to see if one of our military friends can tell us anything about Lord Ay that we don’t already know.”

  “All our friends and relatives are in the infantry, unfortunately.” Maya shook his head.

  “And Ay is chief of the cavalry. Ah, but Pa-aten-em-heb has a friend in the cavalry, doesn’t he? There must be scuttlebutt about what sort of commander Ay is and that sort of thing. Wouldn’t you think?”

  “Yes, although soldiers may not feel free to tattle on their commanding officer.” Maya looked doubtful.

  “We’ll see,” Hani said with amusement, because he could imagine that scribes would be only too eager to tattle on their superiors.

  The River was at its low point, and marshes and sand bars had appeared where normally there were none. A good place to go bird watching, Hani told himself as they slid past reed-choked shallows. But that meant slow and cautious sailing, and it took them a full ten-day week to get home.

  The first thing Hani saw as he crunched up the garden path with Maya in his wake was Ta-miu sprawled luxuriously in a patch of sunlight on the porch, her two half-grown kittens gamboling at her feet. “Hello, little bird eaters,” Hani said affectionately.

  Then he realized that where Ta-miu was, Baket-iset must be found. The women had come back from the farm. Although that put them in danger, he was inordinately glad.

  “Baket-iset, my dear! Nub-nefer! We’re back,” he called. He and Maya dropped their baggage in the vestibule and headed for the salon, where Sat-hut-haru came running out to them with a squeal.

  She headed straight for her husband—with a cry of “Papa!” on the side—and bending, began to pinch Maya’s cheek, cooing and making over him as one would a baby. “How’s my little husband? It’s been so long since I’ve seen you!”

  Hani had to laugh. Maya, far from being offended, lapped it up with the all the pleasure of Ta- miu at a bowl of cream. Hani knelt at Baket-iset’s couch and kissed her cheek. “How is my favorite eldest daughter?” he said tenderly.

  “Well, Papa, it was lovely in the country but, with all Uncle Amen-em-hut’s family, a bit crowded. We decided to come home. Mama brought a pig back, and she was directing the butchering. She must be in the courtyard.”

  “Ah, that’s the girl I married. Not only a polished and beautiful lady but a woman who can butcher a pig.” Hani laughed. He remembered Ptah-mes saying Apeny was the perfect woman, and he thought, No, I’ve married the perfect woman.

  While Maya and Sat-hut-haru billed and cooed, Hani made his way through the kitchen and into the little work court behind, half-shaded with reed matting. Nub-nefer was standing with her hands on her hips and her skirts tucked up while two naked servants carved the bloody carcass, packed it in salt, and prepared to hang strips on lines for smoking. The reek of blood and offal was horrific.

  “May all your enemies end up thus,” Hani said to her back.

  She spun around and cried, “Hani!” He put his arm around her shoulders, and they kissed. “Here you are at last, my love.”

  “Baket-iset told me you were out here being the mistress of the house,” he said with a smile. “I’ve missed you more than I can say.”

  “We came back for Lady Apeny’s funeral. And it was crowded at the farm. Anuia tends to fill up the space around her.”

  “I hope you’re not running any risk here in the city,” he said uncertainly.

  She looked suddenly sober. “There were cases of the plague out there, too, Hani. There’s no place to go where we’re really safe. We just have to trust and make offerings to Sekhmet.”

  “I’ll ask Maya’s mother to cast us all amulets,” he assured her.

  They stood together, watching the butchers at work. At last, Nub-nefer said quietly, “I told Baket-iset about her sister.”

  “And?”

  “She already knew somehow. And was only happy for her that she had found someone to love.”

  “That’s altogether like Baket.” He felt proud of his eldest daughter, but within him, a sad little voice said, She will never find someone to love, alas.

  “She said of all the people we have to worry about, Neferet was the least in need of our anxiety. It gave me comfort.”

  “The girl is a divine oracle, my dove. We’ve seen this before. Somehow, in taking one thing away from her, the gods have supplied her with other gifts.”

  “It was costly,” said Nub-nefer, her voice suddenly unsteady.

  Hani gave her shoulders a squeeze. His nose burned. “How is Father doing?”

  She gave a snort of laughter. “You mean reverend Father? He has some news for you he’s bursting to share. And Pipi’s here. I told him you were gone, but he said he’d just come for the funeral.”

  “When exactly is the funeral?”

  Nub-nefer stared at Hani disbelievingly. “Why, tomorrow. You didn’t know? You just arrived today by accident? It would have been terrible if you’d missed it, Hani. All we owe that family...”

  “The gods directed my step, my dove. Khonsu the Traveler guided me back.”

  ⸎

  Hani and his entire family—except for Aha, making his rounds of the temples of the Aten, and Neferet, in distant Hut-nen-nefer—had come to the chapel of Lady Apeny’s tomb to pay their respects to her. Lady Apeny had been an admired weret khener and a staunch resister of the new cult. They stood at the outskirts of the crowd, behind Ptah-mes’s large family and the more eminent guests, including the two viziers and the high prophets of Amen.

  Ptah-mes’s firstborn, a tall, handsome younger replica of his father, opened the mouth of his mother’s coffin with a ceremonial adze. All the daughters tore their garments and poured dust on their heads and wailed as effectively as a troop of professional mourners, and Hani remembered that the whole lot of them were chantresses of the Hidden One.

  The children looked genuinely distraught, leaning on each other and taking one another in their arms along with a handful of older people whom Hani assumed to be relatives of Apeny. But Hani noticed with a pang that not one of them stood by their father or put an arm around him or tried to comfort him in any way. Ptah-mes stood all alone like a beautiful, elegant stone statue before the mouth of the tomb, pale faced, dry-eyed, and expressionless, with his mouth drawn d
own, thin as a slit. Hani’s heart ached for him.

  Portraying the ancestors of the Osir who was being laid in the house of her ka, the Muu dancers swayed and lifted their arms. Shaven-headed priests, in their leopard skins, chanted and bowed and swung their incense bowls. Then scores of servants began to carry in the grave goods, all that Lady Apeny would need in the afterlife—furniture, jewelry, golden vessels, as well as food in abundance. Ptah-mes had spared no expense for the woman he’d worshiped. At the end, Apeny’s lavishly decorated coffin, draped with wreathes, was sledged inside the tomb, into the darkness that would dawn upon the reunion of her souls. And the tomb was sealed. Silence reigned once more in the realm of the Lover of Silence.

  Nub-nefer was weeping openly as the family made its way down the rocky slope among the guests. Hani turned back at one point and saw Ptah-mes still standing there alone, as if he’d been petrified on the spot, staring at the stone-plugged doorway. Something broke in Hani’s heart, and he debated going back to put an arm around his superior’s shoulders so the man would know he wasn’t completely alone. But it seemed too intimate a moment to interrupt.

  “She was a strong woman,” Hani murmured, and Nub-nefer nodded, trying to stop her tears with the corner of her shawl.

  “A wonderful person. An example of faith to us all,” she agreed, gulping.

  Mery-ra looked back at the tomb, where Ptah-mes lingered. “I’m not sure he’ll recover. Trees that won’t bend will break.”

  His heart leaden, Hani shook his head sadly, unable to find words.

  After a moment during which their crunching footsteps were the only sound, Maya said, “I’ll bet this is the next tomb that’s robbed.”

  Hani and Mery-ra both jerked around to stare at him. “Don’t put the evil eye on her, boy,” cried Mery-ra with an apotropaic gesture. “Whatever makes you say that?”

  Maya spread his hands at the obviousness of it. “It’s the latest tomb here, the same work crew built and decorated it, and it’s as rich as they come. And she was known to be opposed to the king’s policies.”