The Assassins of Isis (18 page)

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Authors: P. C. Doherty

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Amerotke sipped from his wine.
‘Now we come to what you learnt from the scorpion man.
I understand his resentment: the Sebaus have attracted the attention of the Divine One and the power of the law, yet they are unlike the other gangs in eastern Thebes. I have revised my opinion of them. They are not a tribe or clan, but men picked by the Khetra, this so-called Watchman. So what binds them together? A society which will force one of its members to commit suicide and yet remove his corpse for honourable burial?'
‘We could search for the corpse,' Shufoy declared. ‘Even send a messenger to the Temple of Isis and other places of healing, enquiring about anyone who has come for a wound to be bound.'
‘The corpse will be most difficult to trace,' Amerotke murmured. ‘Whilst the person with the missing finger could be tended by a local physician. I'm sure it belonged to a woman, and even if she did go to the Temple of Isis, what information would she give about herself? No, what interests me is what binds the Sebaus together. What is the invisible thread? I think they made a mistake over that guard. Yes.' Amerotke tapped the table top. ‘After court tomorrow, I want you, Shufoy, to discover as much as possible about that guard, his family, his friends, his relations. Do the same for Mafdet. Finally,' Amerotke gestured at the rolls of vellum on his desk, ‘I want you to go through the lists of all those implicated in the robbery of the royal tombs. They all came from different professions, merchants, scribes, officials; some lived in Thebes, others came from Memphis, but there again, is there some thread which binds them all together? There's something in this information which the Sebaus do not wish me to discover; that's why they've marked me down for death.'
Shufoy agreed. Amerotke was about to continue when there was a knock on the door, and his steward entered to say that Chief Scribe Menna and the lady Lupherna were here to see him. Amerotke pulled a face, but asked the steward to bring them in. His guests were rather flustered
as they took their seats, apologising loudly for disturbing the judge.
‘I came,‘Menna mopped the sweat from his strong square face, ‘to show you something, my lord.' He glanced quickly at Lady Lupherna, who nodded. ‘I found it difficult to accept the evidence about the sack. However, I was going through the master's papers when I came across his memoirs.' Menna opened the leather writing satchel on his lap and took out sheets of papyri closely bound together. ‘They are dedicated to the Divine One. Lady Lupherna believes they should be presented to the palace. Anyway, I wondered how far General Suten had reached.'
Menna leafed through the book then handed it over, stubby fingers pointing to a passage. The writing was in the hieratic fashion, done in dark red ink, though now and again General Suten had used hieroglyphs for certain names and terms.
‘I have studied,'
Amerotke read aloud the passage Menna had indicated,
‘the Book of Crossing Eternity.'
The judge looked up, puzzled.
‘It's a treatise,' Menna explained, ‘about what happens when a soul travels into the Far West.'
‘I have reflected,' Amerotke continued, ‘on the Eater of Eternity.' He pulled a face at this rather ancient name for the god Osiris. ‘And when the sun sets,' he read, ‘confronted by the Watchers of the Night, I go back to that hellish cavern and the vipers curling all about me. The clammy terror of my fears is round my heart yet these nightmares do not leave me when I wake. I cannot walk through a field but look for a snake. I cannot relax in the shade of a tree, the fear haunts me. I have talked to the exorcists and healers, little help there. I gave offerings to the Great Mother, the blue-skinned Isis, and I have found some comfort. High Priest Impuki has comforted me. He has told me to reflect on the soldier's way but be careful. I have a demon hunting my soul. I must confront this shadowy swordsman. I must
entice him out of the land of shadows. I, Lord Suten, must show, prove there is more to life than the fear of death.
' This section of writing had finished abruptly. General Suten had drawn five hieroglyphs and, beside these, time and again, the word
hefau
, snake. Amerotke glanced up.
‘At first,' Menna explained, ‘the lady Lupherna and myself found it difficult to accept that General Suten may have brought about his own death.'
‘Did your husband talk about this to you?'
‘On a number of occasions,' Lady Lupherna replied. ‘It was a problem he was forever discussing. Last season we went for a walk along the riverside. I was telling him how sometimes I was frightened to cross the Nile, particularly in one of those light skiffs or punts. When I was a little girl I used to scream. My husband put his arm around me,' Lady Lupherna began to cry, ‘and told me to confront my fears, as one day he must do his. I never realised,' her voice faltered, ‘what he truly meant.'
Amerotke closed the memoir and placed it on the table. ‘May I keep it?' he asked. Lady Lupherna nodded.
‘I've also spoken to Heby,' Menna declared. ‘Tomorrow, my lord, he appears in court in front of you. With your permission I would like to act as his advocate.'
Amerotke agreed to his request, and the two were about to leave when the judge's hand brushed the seal on the table. He picked this up and called them back.
‘Your husband, Lady Lupherna, was a high-ranking general. He was a holder of the imperial cartouche, the great seal of Egypt.'
‘But he was retired,' Menna reminded them. ‘When he gave up his staff of office, the seal was broken and returned to the Divine House.'
‘Was your husband on friendly terms with Lord Impuki, the High Priest of Isis?'
‘He liked him,' Lady Lupherna agreed. ‘He would often go to the temple for advice. Now I understand why. Those
cramps in his stomach had to be examined. He also studied in the library, gathering information for his memoirs. I suppose he and the High Priest were more acquaintances than friends.'
Amerotke thanked them and escorted them back to the garden and his waiting steward. He had hardly returned to his writing office, where Shufoy was stealing a peep at the memoirs, when the steward ran back saying that Lady Nethba was at the gate and needed to see the judge on a matter of urgency.
‘Bring her in,' Amerotke sighed. ‘It seems as if the whole of Thebes wishes to see me!'
Moments later, Lady Nethba, wearing a gauffered robe, with a little maid trotting behind her, swept into the chamber. Without being invited she sat in the great chair before Amerotke's desk, gesturing at the maid to crouch at her feet. She held up her hands, the nails painted a deep purple.
‘I know,' she gazed at the bemused judge, ‘how busy you are, my lord, but I just had to come and see you. I've heard all about what is happening in Thebes.' She leaned closer. ‘It's on everyone's lips, I mean the attack on you, the deaths at the temple. As I used to say to my late husband, although he always claimed to be deaf, matters are going from bad to worse. Now, I know you are very busy—'
‘Yes, yes,' Amerotke intervened.
‘My father—'
‘Lady Nethba, I have been to the Temple of Isis. I have talked to the High Priest Impuki and to the Scribe of the Dead. Your father, may he be happy in the fields of Osiris, had a severe malignancy in his stomach which killed him. He was given the best possible treatment, but he died, and his body is now being honourably treated in the House of the Dead. As for his offering to the temple, that is customary—'
‘I know,' said Lady Nethba, eyelids fluttering. ‘But his
death was so swift.' Her face crumpled into a look of sadness. ‘I just wanted to make my farewells properly. Are you sure, my lord judge?'
‘My lady, I would take an oath upon it.'
Lady Nethba patted her maid on the head and got to her feet.
‘In which case,' she extended her hand for Amerotke to kiss, ‘I thank you for your troubles. Perhaps I was too upset.'
‘Lady Nethba?'
She turned, her hand already on the latch on the door.
‘Why were you so suspicious about the Temple of Isis?'
‘I had an old washerwoman once,' she pulled a face, ‘one of those ladies who always seem old. Her name was Kliya, she was a freewoman. Two seasons ago she fell ill and left her cottage, which stands just beyond the walls of my house. She said she was going to the Temple of Isis. The months passed, I heard nothing, so I went up to the Temple of Isis. I made enquiries of the Scribe of the Dead but he had no record of her. I thought it was strange, because I was sure she had said she was going there. I mean,' Lady Nethba opened the door, ‘where else would she go?'
 
Djed, the cousin of the guard killed near the crocodile pool at the Place of Slaughter, felt pleased and content. He sat in his coloured pavilion at the far end of the small garden which surrounded his square two-storey house in the north-east of Thebes. A salubrious area, as his wife called it, the avenue outside and the lanes leading to it were spacious, paved with basalt stone and lined with thick-bushed persea trees. A comfortable house, Djed thought, in a comfortable area. He pushed aside the platter of duck and chickpeas and grasped his beaker of Buto wine. He loved the evening, to sit here at the end of the day and peer through the half-open door, let the breeze ruffle his light robe and, when darkness fell, stare out at the stars. The saluki hound who
patrolled his garden barked and snarled. The dog would be busy tonight, Djed reflected, driving off the genet and the mongoose which came to poach his ponds or climb the trees hunting for eggs or small birds. Nevertheless, the dog's snarl pricked Djed's feeling of serenity. There was something wrong but he couldn't place it, a danger which couldn't be marked. Ah well.
He sniffed at the wine. When he had served in the army, his officers had always said Djed could never think for himself but was excellent at carrying out orders. He shook himself, narrowing his eyes; tomorrow he would work in the garden amongst his beloved beehives. As a soldier he had served in the regiment of Anubis but now considered himself an authority on bees. In fact the bees reminded him of army life, the military organisation of the hive, the unquestioning obedience shown to the queen bee. Djed could tell at a glance the difference between each species by the minor variations in the length of the wing or the colouring of the belly. He knew how to clear the hives with smoke, as well as imitate the call of the queen bee so that he could sift out the honey in order to vary its richness. He considered himself a true ftui, a beekeeper, and one day he hoped to enroll in the Guild of Beekeepers. He had been out to the House of Life at the great Temple of Isis, and had learnt how Pharaohs had once been called the ‘One of the Bees'. He revelled in the story of how the god Ra had wept and the tears from his eyes had turned into bees.
Djed picked up a small pot of honey and sniffed its delicious aroma. The very sight of this fragrant substance soothed his mind. After he had retired from the regiment, he'd used the little wealth he had gathered to grow vegetables and run a small stall in one of the markets. But the garden had been blighted and Djed and his family had faced a bleak future. At last, he had gone to the Heti — the Guild of Veterans — to seek help for his family. Late at night, soon after, he had been seized by black-garbed
figures who'd taken him across Thebes to a lonely place. He'd been questioned closely by this strange group who'd told him his fortune would soon change. At first his new status had shocked him, but a deben of copper here and a deben of silver there had transformed his life. He had grown wealthy. The Khetra had instructed him to tell people that he had benefited from the legacy of a rich relative in the Delta. Djed had told his wife to keep quiet, not to ask questions or pry, but simply tell their neighbours how the gods had smiled on them.
One task had led to another: messages to be delivered late at night or just before dawn. Mysterious visitors would come, faces masked; they would whisper instructions and flit away like shadows. Djed had met the Khetra in the disused Temple of Khnum, a ghostly place where the Khetra had sat in the shadows as Djed knelt before him, head bowed. He couldn't distinguish the voice. He couldn't even tell if the Khetra was male or female. All he remembered was that cloying smell of jasmine. There had been others present but, like Djed, their faces had been masked, their heads hooded, and that was the way it was. If any of them were captured they could not betray their comrades simply because they didn't know who any of them were. Like the rest, Djed would receive orders, be told to gather here or there, always to be on time, and at the appointed hour, others would join him. Sometimes he was in charge; on other occasions a different leader would issue the orders. At first they had been involved in the robbery of mansions, wealthy houses on the other side of Thebes, but eventually they had turned to the tombs, and the stream of wealth had swollen to a torrent. At first Djed had been terrified as he and the rest poured like bees — yes, Djed smiled to himself — like bees from a hive, silent and formidable, following their leaders up through the rock and shale, the night air freezing their sweat. They'd entered the Valley of Kings, that ghostly place, and climbed up its sides searching for secret entrances.

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