Year of the Hyenas (21 page)

Semerket
tiptoed from
the room, returning to the hearth where the candle glowed. The steady
drone of Paneb’s breathing still rattled distantly, and Semerket roamed
about the foreman’s home, accompanied by Sukis. In the reception room,
he found Paneb’s tool sack. In it were copper chisels of every width,
picks, pig-bristle brushes, wooden mallets for pounding. There was
nothing made from the blue metal.

As Semerket
returned
to the kitchen, he heard Sukis’s loud cry again. Holding the candle so
its light swept the room, he saw the cat poised at the stairs that led
into the cellar. Swiftly, she disappeared down into the dark.

He followed
her; he
would have to catch her and quickly leave. Looking about in the cellar,
he saw the normal supplies—sealed jars of beer and wine, bits of broken
furniture, extra linens, and sacks of wheat and hops. But there was
something odd, too—the goods had been pushed deliberately against a
corner wall. Paneb had piled everything, anything he could find,
against that wall.

Semerket saw
Sukis
leap to the top of the heap, to look searchingly at the mud bricks.
Perhaps she had located a rat, he thought. But the cat looked to him
and wailed insistently.

As silently as
he
could, obeying some instinct (as well as the cat), Semerket lifted the
sacks of grain and placed them against the opposite side of the little
cellar. Just as he was about to move a chair that was missing its leg,
he heard footsteps above. Sukis retreated behind some wheat sacks, ears
flat against her head.

Semerket blew
out the
candle. Paneb had risen from his pallet and was tramping about the
kitchen. In the dark, the foreman lurched into some crockery and swore
dully as the dishes fell, crashing to bits on the tiles. Eventually he
made his way to the rear privy. Semerket heard the powerful stream of
Paneb’s urine hitting the collection bowl. Groaning, the foreman
finally returned to his sleeping room.

Semerket
waited until
Paneb’s breathing again became steady. Though he would have preferred
to linger, to find what was hidden beneath the rubble in the cellar, he
could not find the flint to relight the candle. He cursed himself for
his thoughtlessness when he realized that he had left it in Hetephras’s
tomb. In the lightless cellar, he just managed to edge toward the
stairs to climb them one at a time. He slipped silently into the dark
alley from Paneb’s door, Sukis padding softly beside him.

HETEPHRAS’S FUNERALtook place on a day in
midwinter. As soon as the sarcophagus came within sight of the village,
borne on a sled and dragged by a white ox from Djamet Temple, the women
of the village began to ululate shrilly, their eerie cries echoing
through the canyon walls. As the catafalque drew near, Semerket saw
that pepper had been thrown into the eyes of the ox so that the beast
wept.

Behind the
professional mourning women, who wailed and tore at their hair, stood
the elders and their families, standing stoic and dry-eyed. Paneb wept
openly, however, and many in the crowd went up to him to drape their
arms about his shoulders and whisper comforting words into his ears. He
seemed deaf to their appeals, the tears rolling steadily down his
cheeks, and he could only stare in misery at his aunt’s brightly
painted sarcophagus. Hunro stood beside Neferhotep, wiping at her
reddened eyes. For once the stoop-shouldered scribe stood straight. But
he shed no tears, his face stony. Khepura stood on his other side,
opposite Hunro.

Semerket
peered at the
head woman, trying to read her face. Whatever she was feeling, it was
not mournful. Her eyes darted about, and she twisted and pulled at her
wig, nervously trying to adjust it. Once she looked straight at
Semerket and he ascertained immediately what she felt—it was fear.

At a sign from
the
priest the sled was pulled to the cemetery gates. Several villagers
rushed forward to bear the coffin on their shoulders. Gradually they
made their way into the courtyard of Hetephras’s tomb and set her
sarcophagus upright at the tomb’s door, beneath the small brick
pyramid, so that the priestess seemed to be a guest at her own funeral.

At that point
the
villagers brought forth their offerings—baskets of onions, whose sharp
smell would remind Hetephras to breathe again in the afterlife; flat
loaves of bread, jars of wine and honey, wreaths of sweet-smelling
flowers. Queen Tiya herself had sent a beautiful chair of gilded wood.
Taking a special lever made from the metal of a fallen meteor, a priest
approached the sarcophagus and performed the act of opening Hetephras’s
mouth. Now that she could breathe and speak again, Paneb came forward
to utter the ritual words, for he was her closest living relation.

“May you stand
forever
beside Osiris, Hetephras,” he said, his voice hoarse, “in the fields of
Iaru forever, in the house of eternity that we have made for you.” Then
he addressed the god of the afterlife. “Osiris, who created us, make
her face to shine brightly again, raise her arms and fill her lungs
with your breath.” Then again he addressed the dead woman. “Open your
eyes, Hetephras. Open your eyes.”

Paneb’s voice
broke
and he could not continue. It was Hunro who stepped forward in his
place to utter the concluding prayer. “In peace, Hetephras, may you
ever rest among those who did right.”

Earlier in the
day a
great pit had been dug in the main avenue of the cemetery. The servants
had filled it with coals and embers, and now it glowed hot. The ox was
sacrificed. It was flayed, cleaned, dressed, and spitted.

The feast
lasted long
into the night. Hetephras’s coffin was at last taken into the crypt,
together with the grave-goods. Below, she was placed on the wooden bed
next to the coffins of her husband and little son.

It was at that
point
that Semerket witnessed something strange. With many a grunt and heave,
the men of the village rolled a huge stone wheel—the one he had seen in
Ramose’s workshop—into the tomb’s forecourt, and painstakingly angled
it in front of the tomb’s door. It fit so snugly that not even a piece
of papyrus could have been wedged through the cracks. Semerket looked
about the cemetery in confusion. No such wheel blocked the doors of
other tombs; Hetephras’s was the only tomb that possessed one.

Semerket
noticed that
Sukis had perched on the rock behind him. Poor cat, he thought—did she
know that her mistress was inside the tomb? He reached for her, to take
her into his arms, but she backed away and leapt to a higher rock. She
stared, eyes gleaming, at the tombmakers as they continued to feast
into the night.

SEMERKET WAS INthe potter Sneferu’s
workshop, again demanding to know when he might finish assembling the
broken pieces of the pot Semerket had found at the phantom campsite.
Sneferu apologized, saying that his official work had prevented him
from attending to the matter.

“It seems
you’ve taken
a long time to perform a simple task,” remarked Semerket, scarcely able
to hide his irritation.

“If you’d care
to take
the pieces elsewhere… ?” asked Sneferu hopefully.

Semerket shook
his
head, “No, no…” He looked away.

Children
suddenly went
running past the shed in the direction of the northern gate, followed
by groups of excited adults. Semerket turned to watch, his ears now
catching the thin strains of rams’ horns that blew from far down in the
river valley. Sneferu rose from his potter’s wheel and joined Semerket
outside the workshop. An incongruous smile of joy lit Sneferu’s face.

“What—?”
Semerket
started to ask, but Sneferu was gone, joining the crowds to cheer at
the village gates. Once again he heard the rams’ horns blow, nearer
this time, and the tombmakers’ voices rose to an even more excited
pitch.

Semerket stood
at the
fringes of the crowd. Five chariots sped up the path toward the
village, great clouds of dust churned from their wheels. The horses
were among the finest he had seen, small red ones that soared like
birds over the rock and sand, their legs a blur. Despite the steepness
of the trail, the charioteers drove their teams at a harrowing pace,
seeming not to care that at any moment the horses might misjudge their
footfall and plunge over the cliff’s steep edge. But the steeds made no
misstep, and the tombmakers cheered; they knew this thrilling show was
staged just for them.

As the riders
drew
near, Semerket saw that their leader wore a breastplate of overlapping
gold discs, while on his head was a crown of woven leather. The men who
followed him were also richly armored, though not so grandly. Khepura
pushed her way through the crowd beside him, angling to get closer to
the charioteers. Semerket reached out to grab her massive arm.

“Let me go,
you fool!
It’s Prince Pentwere!” Khepura jerked her arm free and hurried forward.

Semerket was
familiar
with this son of Pharaoh, as all Thebans were. He was the firstborn
child of Queen Tiya, and therefore the nephew of Mayor Pawero. Unlike
his brothers, who were careful to remain discreetly in the background,
Pentwere was a highly visible figure in the southern capital. The
prince was chief of his own elite corps of charioteers. Often they
could be seen on feast days performing feats of derring-do for the
crowds, shooting at targets, thrusting their spears at one another in
mock battle, and jumping back and forth from chariot to chariot.
Thebans adored Pentwere above all the other royal family— for he was
southern, his mother more royal than even Pharaoh, and he was as
good-looking as a god.

But Semerket
knew that
Pharaoh had chosen another as his crown prince—also named Ramses, the
firstborn son of his Canaanite wife, Queen Ese. This prince was little
known to the southerners, being confined to a life of duty and service
in his father’s court in Pi-Remesse. Thebans grumbled bitterly that so
fine a prince as Pentwere had been passed over in favor of a
middle-aged, sometimes sickly prince of the north.

As Pentwere
leapt from
his chariot, the villagers gathered round to hail him, and the prince
held out his hands to grasp theirs and laugh. He was every inch the
folk-tale prince—tall, burly, chestnut skin stretched taut across his
high cheekbones, sleek and well-oiled.

Pentwere
hailed Chief
Scribe Neferhotep and Foreman Paneb as old friends, who were careful to
remain cordial to one another before the prince. No trace of their
recent disagreement was allowed to mar the day. Surrounded by his
handsome cohorts—all strong, muscular men like himself—the prince
clapped the tombmakers fondly on their backs. In a final gesture for
the villagers, Pentwere’s groom cast gold pieces into the air. The
tombmakers and their children screamed for joy as they ran to gather
them up.

The gold was
soon
pocketed, and the crowd reluctantly returned to the village. Neferhotep
and the elders led the prince a few paces away from the gates to confer
with him in low voices. Semerket could not imagine what they had to say
to one another; he doubted whether the finer points of tomb
construction were in Pentwere’s lexicon.

Semerket spied
Hunro
walking with the crowd back through the village gates, her hips swaying
languorously. Pushing his way through the remaining villagers, he
joined her.

“What’s the
occasion?”
he asked, jerking his chin in the direction of Pentwere.

“The prince
often
comes here to review the progress of his father’s tomb.”

“And the
others?”

“I don’t know
all
their names, but the black one is Assai. Just look at those shoulders!
And that neck!” Her eyes were smoky with lust. Then to Semerket’s shock
she began to jump up and down, making sounds like a lovesick young
girl. “Oh! Oh, look! They’re coming this way!”

Indeed, the
royal
party was progressing to where he stood. Hunro’s sharp nudge reminded
him to bow low, arms outstretched.

“Well now!”
Pentwere’s
voice was hearty. “So this is the clever man who solves the riddle of
the old priestess’s death! I especially wanted to greet you today.”

“Oh?” Semerket
said,
looking up. “Why?”

Pentwere’s
black
companion, Assai, was instantly offended that Semerket would question
the prince so directly. But Pentwere ignored any breach of etiquette
and answered Semerket carefully, so that all could hear. “My mother
sends her regards, and bids you make haste in this matter. The gods
grow impatient, she says.”

“Tell your
mother—and
the gods, please—that I’m doing my best.”

The prince
regarded
him with narrowed eyes and laid his arm across Semerket’s shoulder.
“How is the investigation coming? Do you have any leads?”

“Not really.”

Semerket could
not
discern if the prince was displeased or simply indifferent to the news,
but Semerket had the eerie sensation that behind Pentwere’s bland eyes,
for the briefest moment, he had caught a tiny flash of glee.

“I’m sure
you’ll have
something soon,” said the prince with royal condescension, then turned
to regard the elders behind them. “I want you all to know that my
mother, Queen Tiya, expects a quick end to this affair.”

The elders
bobbed
their heads up and down in mute agreement. The groom then brought the
prince a leather bag. Gingerly, he fished about in it, bringing forth a
series of amulets and charms. The prince himself strung some of them
around Semerket’s neck, and placed the rest in his belt.

“More
amulets?” asked
Semerket.

“Mother thinks
the one
she gave you must not be powerful enough, otherwise you’d have solved
the case by now. You know,” Pentwere continued in a friendly tone, “my
mother and I were very fond of the old priestess.”

Semerket
sighed,
knowing what was coming.