Murder in Mennefer, page 2
“Father!” he called now to the figure reclining under the canopy. “Hail, Father!” he shouted as the boat slid into place. Then he saw Kaneferw, his face a ghostly mask, his body shrouded in linen, his limbs as motionless as stone.
2
The image of the hawk and the duck flashed into Imhotep’s heart. His legs went weak, but he willed himself to stay upright, gripping Sebhot’s shoulder and his mother’s hand.
An oarsman leaped nimbly out of the boat and tied its painter to a mooring post. Behind him, four rowers lifted the pallet holding Kaneferw’s body, their faces sad and gray. Water lapped calmly at the sides of the quay as they placed Kaneferw’s litter on the sunbaked stones. Kherry, white-faced, sank to her knees and threw her arms around the shrouded form. Sebhot sobbed. Imhotep clamped his lips to stop their trembling and held his body rigid lest it crumple like a reed under an elephant’s foot. Beloved Father…
Although his mother’s sorrowful wails pierced the din, they did not stop the sailors loading and unloading their vessels, nor prevent the merchants from trading and selling. The life of the City of the White Walls marched on, even as Imhotep’s halted.
He released Sebhot when Odji scrambled onto the quay. The slave shot a helpless look at Imhotep but remained silent, then turned to assist his master off the boat. When Ahmose, looking older than his thirty years, lost his footing, Odji grasped him by his injured arm. Ahmose winced. “Clumsy Kushite! A curse on your mother!” He ceased shouting when he saw the stricken faces of those who waited for him on the quay, but the scowl did not leave his own.
“What has happened?” Imhotep seized Ahmose by his shoulders, eliciting another grimace of pain. “Speak.”
“An accident, young master. A terrible misfortune.” Ahmose ignored the gathering knot of onlookers and kept his reddened eyes on Imhotep. “Two days ago, we were on the site studying the east wall. It had sunk perhaps the length of a finger and had tilted from true. We realized it had to be torn down to make the footing sturdier. We squatted there, your father, Kagemni the overseer, and I, studying the plans, discussing how best to proceed.” Ahmose closed his eyes. “And the wall…the wall collapsed. I twisted away. Kagemni flung himself to one side. Your…your father did not escape.”
“But you did.” Imhotep released Ahmose. “Could you not help him?”
“I tried.” Ahmose cradled his injured arm. “But a stone fell on me as I scrambled back. By the time the other workers got there, it was too late.” He drew a shuddering breath. “It is a great sorrow.”
Hau bent to inspect Kaneferw’s body. After a few moments he looked up at Imhotep somberly. “He has been crushed, as Ahmose says.” Imhotep scarcely heard him, imagining the sound of the stones toppling, his father’s last cries.
The hand on his shoulder pulled him from his thoughts. Thuya held him in a sorrowful gaze. “May he find endless life in the Beautiful West.” He leaned close and spoke rapidly. “Just say the word, Tep, and I will remain here until we can travel together. But my captain is ready to cast off so you must decide quickly.”
Imhotep’s heart lifted. Perhaps it is not impossible. After all, his father had blessed his journey. And, once he had settled his father’s affairs, both Sebhot’s and their mother’s comfort would be assured. He must, of course, honor his father to ensure Kaneferw’s ka would make its way safely to the West. The preparation of the body, the painting of the tomb. He must decide the most propitious time for burial and how many mourners to hire for the funeral. His mother would rely on him to decide Sebhot’s future and—
“Tep?”
His first decision was both the easiest and the hardest. “I cannot leave Mennefer now. Go in peace, Thuya. May the gods watch over you. I will accompany you on your next journey.”
“I am sorry I cannot stay to see him placed in his tomb.” Thuya held his fist over his heart. “This I pledge: every day will I send prayers to Osiris in your father’s name.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
They clasped forearms. “Till I return, then,” said the young sailor.
Imhotep nodded, unable to say more past the lump in his throat. When you return, I’ll likely be the lord of my father’s atelier, captured like a river fish in a well.
He watched his friend slip the painter and step down into the boat. The man at the tiller sang out, and the oarsmen pushed off. Imhotep felt trapped, as if his chest were filled with stones, his feet stuck in thick clay as the tide rolled away.
He swallowed hard. “Odji, fetch a sledge. We’ll take my father’s body to Merisu.” The slave bowed and trotted off.
At the embalmer’s name, his mother choked out a wail, and buried her face in the chancellor’s chest. Sad-faced, Pepi patted her back. “Come, Kherry. I will escort you home. Your servant Wabet will watch over you.”
Hau stood beside his student. “I will share your burden,” he declared.
“As will I.” Ahmose held up his good arm.
“I do not see Kagemni on the boat,” said Imhotep. “He is still on-site?”
“He has remained behind to see what can be done to rebuild the wall, yes. I…I don’t think it can be saved, but Kagemni is more than competent. If anyone can do it…”
“Yes.”
Standing next to Imhotep, Sebhot wept quietly. Imhotep gently cupped his head. “We must be men now.” The younger boy nodded, his eyes clotted with tears.
From over the water, Imhotep heard the rowers raising their voices in thanks to the gods of the Nile for the river’s blessings.
“Hail to thee, O Nile, who manifests thyself over us, and comes to give life to the Two Lands.”
The very same prayer he had breathed not long ago. Imhotep whispered along with them until his throat closed off his words.
Odji returned with a sledge that he placed next to the pallet. He and Hau carefully transferred Kaneferw’s body to the sledge. One-handed, Ahmose took a corner. Hau, Imhotep, and Sebhot gripped the others. Imhotep prayed again: Thoth, make magic on me that I do not shame my father by dropping his body.
Then he turned from his dreams and, with the others, bore his father’s broken body away.
3
The Place of Purification was not far from the quay, but by the time they arrived Imhotep felt as if he’d trudged ten marches through thick river silt. Now that his father’s ba, his animating spirit, had departed his body, should Kaneferw’s remains not feel lighter?
High mud-brick walls screened the embalmer’s huge open-sided tent from the Temple of Ptah. Though hidden from sight and sweetened by the smoke of many censers, no amount of perfume could completely mask the smell of decay wafting from within. Inside, bodies lay in various stages of preparation upon stone slabs. One apprentice washed the body of a child while another, a tall youth, wrapped a corpse in resin-soaked linen.
Merisu the embalmer appeared at the boy’s shoulder and elbowed him aside to chide an apprentice. “Watch, Kawab! Learn!” The master dipped his spidery fingers into the ewer brimming with sand-colored powder. “Use this on your hands, eh? So that the resin won’t adhere to you while you work at tightening and molding the bandages.” His hands flashed around the body, patting and pressing so quickly that his fingers seemed to be living creatures independent of his arms, darting here and there like birds.
When Imhotep, Ahmose, Hau, Sebhot, and Odji set Kaneferw’s body on an empty table, Merisu lifted his chin in acknowledgement. “A moment!” he called and turned back to his work.
“Go now,” Imhotep told the others. “I will stay with my father.”
“We would also stay,” said Ahmose.
“No, you have done enough and need your own injuries addressed. Hau, will you please see to Ahmose?”
Ahmose shook his head. “No, Hau, I beg you attend to the young master. I will go to my healer on my way home.”
“Hau, I am fine,” said Imhotep. “You can be of no further help to my father.”
“Very well. Then with your permission I will leave. But first…” Hau dug into his tunic and handed Imhotep a small bundle of sage. “This will help.” The old man placed a hand on his shoulder. He whispered, so that only Imhotep could hear him, “The stars say that before your father’s tomb is sealed, good fortune will befall you.” Then with Ahmose and Odji he departed from the tent.
Sebhot lingered. “I should stay too,” he said.
“No…this is my responsibility. Go and comfort our mother.”
“Very well.” Sebhot walked off, shoulders slumped.
Grateful for Hau’s gift, Imhotep crushed the sprigs of sage between his fingers and inhaled the herb’s fragrance. He looked around the tent. Dozens of clay jars lined the shelves on one side, the largest on the bottom, smallest at the top. A wood trestle held copper blades, needles, and awls. On another were ranked assorted brushes and pots of pigment. On a separate table to one side were several oddly shaped mummies that Imhotep recognized as baboons and ibises destined to be buried as votive offerings during Thoth’s festival.
Merisu hobbled over on his bandy legs. He lifted the edge of the shroud. “Ah, Kaneferw. I recognize the master. What a pity.” He sighed. “He built my brother’s mastaba. You are his son?”
Imhotep nodded, unable to speak around the knot in his throat.
“May the gods receive him with joy, may his heart balance the scales of Ma’at.” As Merisu stripped the body, Imhotep quailed at the dark blood sticking to his father’s skull and staining the linen shroud.
He had studied wounds with Hau; but those were all of strangers, people whose lives, loves, and joys he did not know. He winced as Merisu straightened Kaneferw’s left arm and leg, each broken in multiple places. Just above the wrist on the right arm, a sharp spur of bone jutted from the flesh.
To see his father so still, so torn and damaged! Kaneferw, with his hands as rough as a laborer’s, had always preferred the building site to the drawing table; he relished the actual construction of his designs, the inspection of materials and the sizing of stones. When he wasn’t working, Kaneferw loved to hunt game birds or swim the Nile, swift as an eel, from bank to bank where it narrowed. They often raced each other, Imhotep’s slender form arrowing through the water behind his father. “Someday you’ll pass me,” Kaneferw had promised.
Now he has left me behind forever. Imhotep clutched his father’s cold hand, its fingers waxy and stiff. He fought back tears.
“I will not entrust your esteemed father to an apprentice,” Merisu said quietly. “Be assured I myself will wash him with palm wine and waters from the Nile.”
“Many thanks, Merisu.”
“But first, I must finish that one.” He nodded toward the next slab, on which Imhotep saw a boy no older than he. The boy’s abdomen was sliced lengthwise, displaying the internal organs. Imhotep noted the groove in the polished sandstone that channeled leaking fluids from the body. Merisu pulled several clay jars from nearby shelves.
Even in the depths of bereavement, Imhotep’s curiosity demanded satisfaction, and he was thankful for the distraction.
“Curious, eh?” Merisu regarded him for a moment with his small, bright eyes. “As you wish.”
Imhotep stood transfixed as the embalmer carefully removed many lengths of glistening intestine and deposited them in the largest jar. He knew that all the body’s organs would be entombed with the deceased. Merisu squinted into the cavity. With a few strokes of a knife, he freed a fleshy mass, the color of brick.
“What is that?” Imhotep blurted.
Merisu paused. “I have heard it said you are Hau’s student. Is this true?”
Imhotep nodded, his eyes still fastened on the wobbly flesh.
“Come here.”
He approached the table, steeling himself against the thick odor.
“This, my boy, is the liver. Imseti, son of Horus, will watch over it in the West.”
Imhotep noted its triangular shape, divided into two lobes. Perhaps one for each side of the body? But for what purpose? He must ask Hau. “He is young, he has no injuries I can see. What happened to him?”
“No need to whisper, boy,” Merisu boomed as he slid the liver into a jar marked with prayers to Imseti. “Poor Sekwaskhet can’t hear you. A sickness in his belly. See? His abdomen is swollen.”
Imhotep studied the body as dispassionately as he could, as Hau had taught him. Do not allow yourself to be sickened or moved to pity by the wounds.
“Sekwaskhet took to his bed, but the pain became agonizing, and he expired some weeks after first complaining of it. It was the wasting disease, the one that creates strange growths in the body. The healers could do nothing.”
Imhotep nodded slowly. Hau has spoken of poisonous sacs that grow within. He stared into the bloody body cavity. One never knows when the hand of Anubis will pluck one’s ba.
Wiping his hands on his soiled tunic, Merisu reached inside Sekwaskhet and drew forth a misshapen whitish mass. “Here it is.” Imhotep recoiled, not from the sight or smell, but from the cold fact that a knot no bigger than a quince could kill someone. “This too goes into the tomb. Though it ended his life, it is the work of the gods and must be preserved.” Only one jar now remained empty.
Slowly, reverently, Merisu once more slipped his hands into Sekwaskhet’s chest and cupped a wedge of flesh the size of his palm without pulling it from its wet red nest. “Sekwaskhet’s heart.”
Imhotep’s own heart lurched. He knew that the source of Sekwaskhet’s thoughts and feelings also held his fate. After death, Ma’at herself weighed a man’s heart against her feather of truth to see if he had lived with honor.
Leaving Sekwaskhet’s heart in place to travel to the West with the body, Merisu excised the lungs flanking it. He deposited them in the fourth and final jar, to be blessed and watched over in the tomb by Hapi, deity of the North, Imhotep knew, so the young man could live again in the Fields of Yalu and accompany the Sun on its daily ride.
“Master, a word?” An artisan held his brush aloft over the finely molded cast of a woman.
Merisu wiped his hands once more and limped over to the finishing table. The careful application of resin and linen bandages to the woman’s body had perfectly rendered her slender neck, full breasts, and graceful hands. When hardened by the heat of the Two Lands, the linen would become a shell like a beetle’s carapace. Protected from corruption, it was painted, as the artist was now doing, making the deceased appear even more lifelike.
Merisu gazed at the painter’s work. “Good, good. Except her eyes are a rare green, not brown.” He sighed. “A lovely woman, a magistrate’s wife. You can be sure her dress will be of the finest linen, threaded with gold, well suited for the company of the gods.”
Imhotep drew in a sharp breath. His father, always so elegant in his best tunic, his shining gold pectoral necklace, gold bands burnishing his arms. But to meet the gods with this poor broken body… Unable to help himself, he wept over his father’s battered form.
As if reading his mind, Merisu murmured, “Fear not, my son. I promise you, after I have prepared Kaneferw for his journey he will appear as you remember.”
Imhotep mumbled his thanks and hurried out into the baking sunlight of mid-afternoon, relieved to be free from the miasma of the master embalmer’s realm.
Taking deep breaths of fresh air to flush his lungs, he wove his way through Mennefer’s crowded byways. He consoled himself with the knowledge that Kaneferw’s ka, his true, eternal self, would soon consort with his ancestors and the gods, designing and building new monuments and temples in the Beautiful West.
Biting his lips against the pang in his heart, Imhotep entered the rear courtyard of his home. How strange… Everything here is as it was yesterday. The dried-grass broom by the door, the pile of broken pottery shards for writing, the fruit ripening on the fig trees.
He stood frozen on the threshold until Momo mewled plaintively. Jumping lightly from the low branches of a fig tree the cat advanced, tail up, to greet him.
Imhotep knelt and petted her spotted fur, golden in the late afternoon light. “You don’t want to go inside either.”
Purring, Momo nuzzled his hand, staring at him with eyes the color of jade, and then vaulted back up onto a branch.
Imhotep rose, steeled himself, and entered the house. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior after the brilliant daylight. A single big room comprised the entirety of the ground floor, with a section in the rear curtained off and used by his mother as her sleeping area. In the back room, Wabet hovered over her mistress, serving her a cup of wine and a plate of figs. Sebhot, swollen-eyed, gobbled honey-cakes as if they could fill the void left by his father’s death. Ahmose’s slave, Odji, sat on a low stool at the foot of Kherry’s bed, looking uncomfortable.
At Imhotep’s questioning look, Odji said, “My master bid me attend to your mother while his arm is being treated.”
Imhotep nodded. “Thank you.” He took in his mother’s ravaged face. The kohl lining Kherry’s eyes now smudged her cheeks, her nose was as bright as the red ocher she put on her lips, and her wig listed to one side.
“You’d best drink that.” Imhotep inclined his head toward the wine.
Kherry sobbed and clasped her hands. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
“I’ll take my leave,” Odji said, rising. “You are here now, and I must return to my master.”
“Thank Ahmose for his kindness,” said Imhotep, accompanying Odji to the front door. “And I thank you for yours.”
Odji bowed his head. “It’s nothing. Your father was always good to me.”
“Not like Ahmose, I know…He always speaks so harshly to you, calling you lazy.”
