The Gardener and the Assassin

by Mark Gajewski

  I got to my feet and pushed roughly past Amennakht into the front room with its stone lintel and red–painted wood door. Reshpetref was rummaging through paintings and stelae and sacrificial plaques and busts of ancestors adorning the domestic altar at the top of three steps just inside the door. The ancestors were Mesedptah’s; he took no interest in mine. Our limestone cult statue of King Amenhotep, painted white except for the blue and white striped nemes and black eyes and eyebrows and false beard, was still in one piece, but the wooden statue of his mother, Ahmes–Nefertari – dressed in a close–fitting tunic, wearing a braided wig and a vulture crown with a uraeus on her brow and holding a lotus blossom fan in her left hand – had been wrenched from its rectangular base. The false door through which the kas of deceased family members visited the house was split in two. I picked up an ostracon of a lute–playing woman wearing a clinging dress, depicted from above. It was the only relic of my family that belonged to me, created by my ancestor Ika during his sojourn in Akhetaten, the city in the middle section of the valley founded by the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, in the style pioneered during his reign. Reshpetref was studying a votive stone stela Mesedptah had recently commissioned for the local temple, showing Ahmes–Nefertari and Amenhotep in the top register and Mesedptah and me on our knees with our hands lifted in prayer in the bottom.

  “Put that down, Cousin!” I insisted. “It belongs to the gods!”

  Reshpetref hurled it to the floor with all his might. It shattered. “The gods don’t accept offerings from thieves.”

  “Well said!”

  I turned. The neighbor women peering at me through my open door were growing in number – some curious, some gleeful, none sympathetic. Not surprising. They’d mostly shunned me since the day of my marriage – except when they had need of me as a healer or to help them in their birth bowers or in their rooftop gardens. Then they set aside their dislike for Mesedptah, a dislike that had colored their perceptions of me for years. Mesedptah believed he was better than everyone in Ta Set Maat and rarely deigned to so much as greet a passerby, much less offer a kind word. In fact, since I’d become his wife he’d demanded payment before allowing me to act as healer or gardener, two things I’d done as a matter of course before my marriage. I paid the price for his greed and arrogance over and over, spending most of my time by myself, my loneliness eased only by Ta Set Maat’s children. The nights their fathers slept in the rest house on the heights dozens gathered in my rooftop garden to listen spellbound to stories that had been handed down in my family from ancient times, about kings and pharaohs and distant lands. Among the young I was the most popular woman in the village. They filled a gaping void in my life, gave me the affection I craved. I so desperately wanted to have children of my own, but after three dead daughters in the first four years of my marriage and no pregnancies since I’d been forced to accept that the gods didn’t intend for Mesedptah and me to be parents. Husbands of my neighbors didn’t share their wives’ concerns about me; they’d considered me a great prize before my marriage and my marriage hadn’t stopped their leering looks or suggestive comments. Mesedptah reveled in those remarks, purposefully parading me about the village most evenings past men who desired me, his expression proclaiming he’d triumphed over them by obtaining me. I detested those walks. I dropped to my hands and knees and carefully gathered the pieces of the stela and stacked them on the bottom step of the shrine. Just as I rose a few villagers spilled into my house. The street was too small to contain the crowd now. I wanted to curl into the fetal position and hide my face in shame. I’d never live this day down. I hung my head and turned my back to the crowd as the destruction continued.

  “We didn’t find anything on the roof,” Anhirkawi reported to Amennakht.

  “There’s nothing in this room either,” Amennakht admitted.

  “I told you!” Mesedptah shouted angrily. “I’m no thief!”

  “You stole all right!” Pendau snarled.

  “But without proof…” Amennakht said resignedly.

  “What business do you have here?” Anhirkawi snapped.

  I turned. Sitmut was standing just inside the door, her eyes wide. She was fifteen, the most beautiful young woman in Ta Set Maat, five years my junior. Her fine white linen skirt was better than any I owned, as was the gold pendant on a gold chain around her neck. She’d been assigned by the village elders to help with chores around my house and meal preparation the last few years. There were half a dozen girls similarly employed in Ta Set Maat, all rotating from house to house, working in each a day or two every week. But Sitmut worked at my house exclusively, every single day.

  She was staring at the debris. The men were staring at her.

  “Well?” Anhirkawi asked sharply.

  “I clean and cook for My Lord Mesedptah,” Sitmut replied.

  “Maybe she knows,” Pendau said.

  “Knows what?” Sitmut asked.

  “Where did Mesedptah hide the treasure he stole from the tomb of Ramesses the Great?”

  Sitmut tensed. Panic crossed her face. “I don’t know anything about treasure,” she said, her voice quavering.

  Reshpetref stepped to her side and yanked the pendant from around her neck. “Where did you get this? It could have come from Pharaoh’s tomb.”

  Sitmut’s hands were trembling. “A gift, My Lord.”

  “An excessively rich gift. From whom?”

  “I can’t say, My Lord.”

  “Can’t or won’t? Someone in the village? In return for cleaning his house?” Anhirkawi’s eyes narrowed. “Or for something more intimate?”

  Sitmut’s face reddened. She exchanged a brief glance with Mesedptah.

  In that instant I knew. Mesedptah had slept with Sitmut. He’d given her the pendant in return. Probably the skirt, too. And if he’d slept with her, he’d probably slept with Pendau’s wife and daughter, as charged. My husband was a philanderer. If he’d been with these three women without my knowing, what else had he done? Rob tombs? I wished the earth would open up and swallow me and hide me from this humiliation.

  “We’re going to have to beat the truth out of them,” Amennakht said. “All three – Mesedptah and Neset and Sitmut.”

  Me? They were going to beat me because of my lying thieving husband? I didn’t know anything. I didn’t deserve to suffer.

  Amennakht addressed Pendau. “Find me a stout stick.” He eyed Sitmut. “We’ll start with you.”

  She fell to her knees, her hands clasped together. “No! Please, My Lord!”

  “Let her be!” Mesedptah shouted, straining against his bonds.

  Sitmut burst into tears.

  I couldn’t believe Mesedptah was trying to protect her so passionately. With me he was brusque and distant, never tender or affectionate. In fact, he’d never once told me he loved me. Sitmut obviously meant more to him than I did. Everyone in the room could see it.

  Anhirkawi raised Sitmut from the floor and took her in his arms. He held her protectively, pressed her face against his chest, stroked her hair.

  She continued to sob.

  “There’s no need to beat her, Amennakht,” Anhirkawi simpered. He tilted Sitmut’s head back so he could look into her tear–filled eyes. “I’m sure you haven’t done anything wrong. You cleaned my house on occasion several years ago. You eased my wife’s burdens. She likes you. Just tell us – is there someplace besides this house where Mesedptah might hide something he’s stolen?”

  Mesedptah was staring daggers at Sitmut. Anhirkawi was holding her so that her back was to him. She couldn’t see him.

  “Perhaps his tomb, My Lord?” she replied softly.

  Amennakht clapped his hands together and smiled. “Of course!”

  “Can you take us there?” Anhirkawi asked.

  “Don’t you dare!” Mesedptah hissed.

  “I’ve carried the midday meal to him and men working on it on their days off a few times,” Sitmut admitted.

  “Excellent.” Amennakht swept the
room with his eyes. “You men – bring Mesedptah along. You’re coming too, Neset. Lead the way, Sitmut.”

  I fell in behind exulting officials and my grim husband and sniffling Sitmut, whispering a prayer to the falcon, god of my family, to show me mercy. No one guarded me particularly, but why should they? There was no place for me to run. And I hadn’t done anything anyway. I wasn’t going to act guilty without reason. I exited my house and stepped into the narrow street and firmly closed my door behind me. A useless exercise, since there was nothing inside worth salvaging. The officials led us towards the village’s single gate, snaking slowly through the jostling jeering crowd that filled the street.

  The name of the long–deceased original owner was inscribed on the limestone doorpost of every house we passed. His descendants for the most part now occupied the structures. Every house was whitewashed, its wooden door painted red. Most doors were currently wide open, the reception rooms just inside packed with neighbors gesturing and shouting at us animatedly. Children were running back and forth between houses and in and out of open doors. I collided with a few. Their parents cursed me, smirking or haughty. For years they’d taken their dislike for Mesedptah out on me, afraid to confront him. This morning they’d watched the destruction on my roof and had clearly judged me guilty without even knowing what Mesedptah and I were accused of. Piercing screams suddenly rose in the street ahead of us. More excited village officials were exiting houses and joining our procession, captives of their own in tow. I recognized Pentauret and Qenna and Weserhat. Mesedptah’s alleged accomplices were being rounded up too.

  We passed through the village gate. The Medjay looked us over suspiciously, one hand resting on the handle of a short sword tucked into his leather belt. Khaemwase, the village gatekeeper, was frantically trying to record the name of everyone who exited on a sheet of papyrus, a clear impossibility. Directly ahead of us, on high ground, were the village’s temples, smaller versions of those belonging to the gods Amen and Mut and Khonsu across the river in Ipet–Isut, the sprawling ancient sacred complex. Some of the temples were hundreds of years old. Each was crammed with thousands of small stelae and statues of villagers made of polished wood or fine white stone, left as offerings to the gods. We turned towards the steep hillside west of the village that descended from the base of a small vertical cliff to nearly touch the village wall. That hillside had served as our village cemetery from the very beginning and was peppered with tomb shafts and mud–brick chapels and miniature pyramids and small white buildings with brightly painted doorways. Some of the tombs were elaborate, some mere openings cut into the hillside or clefts in outcrops. The interiors of many had been magnificently decorated by village craftsmen in their free time. A network of paths, white with dust, switchbacked up the hill through the midst of the tombs. A mountain peak, the Qurn, towered over the hill, home of the goddess Meretseger – She Who Loves Silence.

  We wound up one of the narrow paths, single–file, climbing towards the hill’s crest. It was nearing midday now and the sun was beating down mercilessly, reflected by the light–colored path and hillside. Sweat was pouring off me. Because this wasn’t a workday many men had been laboring since dawn on their own tombs or those of their neighbors. Every craftsman in Ta Set Maat traded labor with his fellow craftsmen, each taking advantage of the other’s particular skill. Currently most men were lounging in the shade inside tomb entrances, eating their midday meals. They watched us pass with curiosity. A few fell in behind me to see what was going on. The tombs along the path were in every stage of construction. Men were excavating some, their hammerstones ringing against copper chisels, their sons lugging limestone chips down the path in reed baskets and dumping them in a heap at the base of the hillside. One man was plastering a tomb; he’d already covered the left hand wall with a thin layer. Once it dried the wall would be ready for decoration. He’d also sealed cracks in the rock on the right side of the tomb to make the surface as even as possible. In another tomb a craftsman had drawn images in black and corrected them in red. A little ways farther on was a tomb already half–painted. Pigments and bowls and reeds lay a few feet inside the entrance but no one was currently working. I recognized the equipment as Mesedptah’s. He’d been decorating the tomb. Someone else was going to have to finish it.

  From so high the view of the village and hills and distant river was magnificent. A line of donkeys was carrying supplies from the river towards the Enclosure of the Tomb, a massive storehouse just outside the village. Scribes were waiting there to take inventory and divide the load into portions for distribution. Everything workers and their family members needed, all five hundred of us – drinking water, wood, grain, fruit, vegetables, clothing, pottery, linen, beer – was delivered to the Enclosure, then parceled out. The donkeys were treading a narrow path through the portion of the cultivated strip set aside to grow vegetables and fruits for the village. East of the cultivation, dozens of boats were docked at quays on both sides of the river, making deliveries to Waset, the rambling town on the east bank of the river, or the storage magazines of half a dozen pharaohs’ temples of millions of years on the west. From those vast storehouses much of the valley was supplied.

  “This is it,” Sitmut said, halting in front of a wooden door enclosing an opening carved into the limestone hillside.

  Reshpetref dragged me past everyone lined up along the edge of the narrow path to where my husband and Sitmut and Amennakht were standing. Sitmut looked terrified, Mesedptah calm, Amennakht anxious.

  I’d never visited Mesedptah’s tomb. I knew he had one because he’d already buried two wives. He was twenty years older than me and he’d taken me to his bed a month after I’d become a woman, barely two months after his second wife’s death in childbirth. After discussions with the village elders, Father had given me to Mesedptah instead of another of my numerous suitors as a means of strengthening bonds between the village’s left and right work gangs, and to align himself with Mesedptah’s far more prominent family. In turn, Mesedptah had given Father his widowed sister, Meresamun, to wife.

  I’d had no say in the matter. My friends had been jealous of what they thought was my good fortune, for Mesedptah was one of the village’s wealthiest craftsmen and they’d envied my perceived future life of luxury. But I’d never wanted to marry anyone from Ta Set Maat or spend the rest of my life trapped in what I considered a prison. From the moment I was old enough to understand and right up to the day she died, my mother had filled my head with marvelous tales about my ancestors and told me over and over that I was special. As proof, she’d pointed to the falcon–shaped birthmark that decorated my upper thigh. Our family had been chosen by the falcon god more than four thousand years ago to represent him on earth, she’d told me, and a handful of my forebears had done truly amazing things in his name. Some had actually changed our world. I wanted to be like them when I grew up, to freely wander the valley from the cataract in the south to the sea in the north, to pursue my own destiny. As a child I’d developed an appetite for freedom as I’d helped Grandfather care for Pharaoh’s gardens, following him daily around the east and west banks, visiting temples and Pharaoh’s per’aa, or royal residence, caught up in the excitement of glimpsing the royal family from afar, watching the great festival parades spellbound at Grandfather’s side. I’d allowed myself to dream that someday he’d arrange a marriage for me with an overseer or official who’d take me away from the stifling confines of the Place of Truth.

  Instead, Father had given me to Mesedptah, a greedy vindictive unaffectionate man. Mesedptah had chosen me over women closer to his own age because he’d expected me to be strong enough to bear him many sons and because my talents as healer and gardener would increase his wealth. The first few years he’d treated me relatively well, though distantly and coldly outside our bed. But as the years passed and I failed to give him an heir he’d become increasingly bitter and resentful, treating me like a burden. I’d come to crave the days he slept at the rest house near the
Great Place, apart from me.

  How had I been so unaware of his unfaithfulness? I’d never seen any signs. Then again, I’d never looked for any. I glanced at Mesedptah’s tomb. I’d always assumed I’d share it. Now it seemed just as likely he intended it for Sitmut. Or other women.

  Amennakht smashed the clay that sealed the door shut and yanked it open.

  The tomb went back about thirty–five feet into the hillside, its ceiling arched, high enough for a man to stand erect. Though most of the interior was in shadow, thanks to reflected sunlight I could see the walls were evenly plastered and covered with beautiful bright images of Mesedptah. The entire left hand wall depicted him decorating the walls of the third Ramesses’ tomb, the highlight of his professional career, for he’d been its chief painter. On the right hand wall were images of Mesedptah at leisure – sailing on the river, playing Senet, sitting in a garden, feasting. In each scene he was accompanied by one or more women, none of whom were me. They weren’t his other wives either. The back wall was entirely covered by an image of the god Montu seated on a throne; Mesedptah was kissing the ground at his feet. On the floor, their heads abutting the Montu wall, were three gorgeously–decorated wooden coffins – two belonging to Mesedptah’s dead wives, the third, empty, his. Arranged around them were an ebony bed frame, many highly–polished wooden boxes, several chests, and many jugs of beer and wine. It was jarring that despite our eight years of marriage Mesedptah hadn’t commissioned a coffin for me.

  “How did you afford all this?” Amennakht asked my husband hotly.

  “My friends excavated and plastered my tomb. I painted the walls of their tombs. You saw the one next door – if you hadn’t broken into my house and falsely accused me I’d be working on it right now.”

  “You don’t have that many friends,” Pendau snickered.