Flowers of Evil, page 19
“Let’s see how Brute and the other boys get along.” If Brute didn’t like the three old dogs and lunged at them, not even both girls together could hold him back. But Neferet was in a buoyant mood, and that prospect didn’t fill her with the anxiety it might otherwise have done.
He turned out to be the well-trained gentleman Lord Ptah-mes had promised. They led him into the courtyard, where he stood with a modest wagging of his curled tail, while Mangler, Faithful, and Hedgehog gaped incredulously at his size and finally began to wag as well. There was mutual sniffing, and the oldsters passed in and out under his belly while Brute looked on with a small, benevolent eye. The children were properly awestruck.
“Ride! Ride!” Tiry begged, her arms around the creature’s neck.
“All right. Once. But you boys are too big. He’s the size of a donkey, but he’s not built the same.” Neferet wondered if there weren’t some sort of little cart he could pull, though. Even goats did that.
Once inside the bare dispensary, other, somber thoughts chased out the good mood. Where do we start? Beds and stools. Pots and boxes. Then replace the medicines. Oh no. We should have instruments remade first—that will take time.
“Where is Mut-tuy?” Bener-ib asked.
Neferet looked up. Only then did it strike her that the girl hadn’t been among the other children. “Mut the mother of us all! I don’t know. Ask the nurse.”
But the rustle of the fly mat being pushed aside made the two young women turn, and their question was answered. Mut-tuy stood in the doorway, her short hair sticking up like Faithful’s, her fists on her narrow hips.
“Where were you people?” she said angrily. “Lord Ptah-mes’s servants said you’d all charged out at once, and nobody told us anything. That was hours ago. I’ve been looking all over.”
“It’s been quite a morning, my girl. We’ll tell you all about it.”
They sat in a circle on the floor, and Neferet began the account eagerly. But her audience didn’t warm. Mut-tuy’s face was as hard and red as a pomegranate, her eyes narrowed in fury. It took Neferet aback. She’d expected the girl to get excited about the advance in their investigation, but the thirteen-year-old looked ready to commit murder herself.
“You could have told me. I could have gone with you,” she shouted.
It occurred to Neferet that this was a girl whose mother had abandoned the family—run away with a man she thought loved her. The little ones had accepted the idea that the woman was dead, but Mut-tuy had been old enough to suspect the truth. No wonder she had a particular fear of being left behind.
“You’re right. We should have,” Neferet said contritely. “Everything just happened so fast. We charged off on Lord Ptah-mes’s chariot—”
“A chariot! That’s the limit! You got to ride a chariot while I didn’t even know what was going on. You treat me like a child.” Her voice was rattling with tears of rage.
“That’s how the men treated us,” said Bener-ib comfortingly. “They wouldn’t let us do anything.”
“But we do have a plan to carry things forward, even though Papa dare not show up again to pay the man.”
Mut-tuy refused to ask about the plan and sat, arms folded, in disgruntled silence.
“I’m going instead,” Neferet finished.
“Then take me with you.” A coal glowed in Mut-tuy’s tear-rouged eyes.
Neferet and Bener-ib looked at one another, caught between reluctance and the hope of a quick cure for the girl’s snit.
“All right,” Neferet said slowly. “But you’ve got to do exactly as I say.”
⸎
The next morning, Neferet and Mut-tuy set off toward the temple of Montu, having only a general idea of their destination. Neferet had loaded the required number of silver debens into a chest, which a servant carried. She’d had, of course, to alert Lord Ptah-mes that she was taking a substantial sum from his strongbox. He looked troubled—seemed to want to say something—then bit back his words.
“Don’t tell Papa what we’re doing,” she said.
But while he’d agreed in a vague way, he hadn’t exactly promised. At least, he hadn’t forbidden her the silver or locked her in the house.
Now Neferet and the girl stood in front of a tumbledown dwelling overhung by a massive sycomore fig. The cicadas pulsed under a sun like electrum, but it wasn’t the heat that made Neferet’s scalp run with perspiration. The risks of her plan had begun to penetrate. She was starting to hope that no one had dared return to the place.
“You can set that chest just inside the door and leave,” she told the servant. He seemed eager to be gone, and in a heartbeat, the two young women stood alone, facing the sagging door panel. Mut-tuy swallowed hard, then Neferet did the same.
“Anybody in here?” Neferet called. “I’ve brought your silver.”
The silent darkness answered them. A rustle that set Neferet’s hairs on end turned out to be a rat.
“I guess they’re not here,” she said in disappointment and turned to go.
But at that moment, two men emerged from the shadows and took hold of an arm of each. They marched Neferet and Mut-tuy wordlessly into the twilight of the interior.
Neferet fought back the lump of her heart that seemed to want to pop out of her mouth. This was what she’d hoped for, but it was fraught with the possibility of disaster.
In the salon, a faint ray of sun stretched diagonally across the upper part of the room, leaving the lower part in twilight. A man was sitting on the low platform of the birthing bower, his face in shadow. Neferet could see the little tail of hair that garnished his shaven forehead.
“Who are you?” said the man in heavily accented Egyptian.
“I’m the daughter of the man who engaged you yesterday. The police arrested him as he was leaving, so he couldn’t come back in person to pay you. He told me to bring your silver. He wasn’t even sure you’d show up after the police raid.”
The man stood, and he was tall and formidably built. “Give it to me and leave. My men have distracted the medjay for the moment, but they’re encircling the house. We dare not stay around.”
“It’s in that chest. I can’t pick it up. It’s too heavy.”
The Hurrian gave orders to one of his men to get the chest and check the contents. The clank of metal rings echoed dully. From the vestibule, the fellow called, “It’s all here, Chief.”
“Go,” said the chief tersely. “Tell your father he’ll receive the corpse in due time.”
“Before we leave, could you answer one question for me, please? Who is this man?”
The assassin laughed, a hard clatter of stones. “A jackal on two legs. I won’t be sorry to see that bastard go.” He squinted at her closely. “Are you the daughters who’ve suffered at his hands? Then I needn’t tell you the sort of man he is.”
Papa didn’t say anything about this. Neferet felt a great hollow pit open in her stomach, as if she’d fallen off a ledge. Dear gods, what’s the story here? “Uh, yes. He’s ruined our lives, and we want to see him punished.”
“Yes,” said Mut-tuy with convincing savagery.
All at once, the man jerked as if he’d heard something. “Get them out,” he said to his guards. He melted into the shadows, and they heard his footsteps disappear into the darkness.
The two henchmen stepped out of the shadows and half guided, half frog-marched the young women toward the door and the light.
“He never told us the human jackal’s name,” Neferet complained to her captor.
The big man rumbled with a sinister chuckle. “They call him Sekhat. Rabbit.”
⸎
Neferet shaded her eyes, blinded by the sunlight. “Let’s get out of here before the police get back.”
They hustled along the street until a shout made Neferet stop. Someone had called her name. She turned and saw Papa and Maya appearing from around the corner.
They hurried toward Neferet and Mut-tuy and swept them inland, away from the dead end of a neighborhood.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in surprise.
“Lord Ptah-mes said he wanted you protected, and we came in case there was trouble.”
“I thought you were afraid of encountering the police.”
“There didn’t seem to be any.” Papa set a brisk pace, and the others kept abreast with difficulty. “Neferet, I know everything turned out all right, but that was incredibly foolhardy.”
Her sense of triumph was tinged with annoyance. “Or you could say, ‘It was foolhardy, but everything turned out all right. Congratulations, Neferet. Brilliant work.’ We gave him the silver, and we got out safe. He had somehow distracted the medjay from the area. And”—she turned to her father with sparkling eyes—“we found out something very interesting about the man who had Sen-em-iah killed.”
“What’s that?” Maya asked dutifully.
“His name is Rabbit.”
The two men stopped abruptly and stared at her.
“Rabbit is his name? I’ve never heard anybody called Sekhat.” Maya looked skeptical.
“Nickname—whatever. It’s what the Hurrian calls him. He seems to think he’s quite a low beast.” Neferet beamed back and forth at the men. “Which means our florist was saying his killer’s name with his final breath. He wanted us to find and punish the man.”
Papa frowned, deep in thought, Maya looked dubious, while Mut-tuy’s face was lit by wild fires.
“And the sight of his name made that woman run out into the garden to flee, where she was killed,” Neferet crowed. Nobody could remember the florist’s wife’s name except Bener-ib. But at least her nickname wasn’t Rabbit, as Neferet had once considered.
“I guess we’ll go home for a bit and reassure Lord Ptah-mes that everything is all right. You owe him a number of silver debens, Papa. I raided his strongbox.”
Neferet parted company with her father and brother-in-law, Mut-tuy trailing along.
“Actually,” said Neferet after the men were out of sight, “I want to reassure Ibet first. Let’s go back to the dispensary.”
The servant who had deposited the chest was already back on duty in the garden. On the path to the house, Brute sat like a lion-bodied statue of the king, keeping watch over his new domain, while the three oldsters slept in the shade. The children seemed to be in a fight, with much loud name-calling.
Neferet rolled her eyes. “We should sic your brothers and sister on this murderer. That should scare him into embracing the path of virtue.”
“They’re worse than animals,” Mut-tuy said pitilessly.
Bener-ib appeared in the doorway, clearly on tenterhooks. “Oh, thanks be to the Great One, you’re home safe! I was so worried.” She threw her arms around Neferet, who reciprocated joyously. Mut-tuy watched with narrowed eyes.
“You won’t believe what we found out!” Neferet proceeded to describe the meeting and how the identity of the killer had been revealed. “Now we just have to locate him.”
“And convict him,” Bener-ib said.
“But he’s already going to be executed, isn’t he? Isn’t your father going to pounce on him when the assassins try to kill him?” Mut-tuy said.
“But consider, my girl. It will make it a lot easier to watch and follow the Hurrian if they know who Rabbit is. There’s a little service we can perform.”
Bener-ib had spent the morning most fruitfully. Several stools had been restored to the salon, three beds were ordered, and pots of all sizes sat stacked in the preparation room. Freshly cut herbs even hung from the rafters.
“This is marvelous, Ibet. You’ve gotten so much done. How is Djed-har coming along?”
“Much better. But I don’t know how well he’s ever going to get. At least he won’t die right away—which he would have without us.”
“I hope he’s grateful.”
Bener-ib stuck out her lip in consideration. “I’m not sure he is. His pride has been hurt, I think.”
“Saved from death by women, you mean?” sniffed Mut-tuy. “Let him die if he doesn’t like it.”
“Behold real life,” said Neferet, world-weary. “We have to prove ourselves every moment.”
She had just about decided to put an end to the day and take the children home for the rest of the afternoon when two dust-whitened workmen came shuffling in, supporting a third between them on the saddle of their hands. His foot was dripping blood, despite a greasy rag bound around it. The poor man’s face was so anguished it tore the heart.
“What happened to you, my friend?” Neferet asked as she directed them to seat him on a stool and propped his foot up on another.
“We’re stonecutters, mistress. A big stone fell on his foot.”
Her heart sank. He would almost certainly be crippled by the accident.
She had the men lift their companion onto the scrubbed worktable, and Bener-ib carefully unwrapped the injured foot. It wasn’t an encouraging sight. The bones were crushed and mingled with the flesh in a bloody, shapeless mass. There was no way to clean it. If they just bandaged it, it would surely putrefy. Neferet, the sweat breaking out on her forehead, caught Bener-ib’s eye. They looked hopelessly at one another.
“Do we have a saw?” she mouthed.
Bener-ib nodded.
“We’re going to have to amputate.” The thought made her shudder. She’d watched Lady Djefat-nebty cut off limbs, but she herself had never done it. “How much sepen do we have?”
“Enough.”
The poppy juice, which was imported from somewhere across the Great Green, was as dear as gold, and only the rich could afford it, mixed with white wine and saffron. Of course, their precious bottle, with its bulbous shape and long neck that recalled the shape of a poppy seed capsule, had been destroyed in the sacking of their supplies. But either Ibet had managed to salvage some, or she had replaced it.
Thanking Sekhmet that Ibet’s shopping trip had replenished their supplies, Neferet sent Mut-tuy after clean cloths, wine, an obsidian scalpel, and a bone saw. “And a cauterizing iron. Do we have one?”
Bener-ib shook her head. She was biting her lip and looking distinctly pale.
We’ll have to sew. Ibet would do a neater job with this, but I don’t think she has the strength to saw through a bone.
Bener-ib dosed the man with the poppy-juice tincture, and soon, his screams and moans subsided.
“Give him as much as you dare, Ibet. We don’t want him waking up too soon.” Neferet dashed the sweat from her face with the back of an unsteady hand. “You men hold onto him just in case he comes to.”
She poured a libation of wine over the ankle and over her scalpel and, with a heartfelt prayer to Sekhmet and Im-hotep, started cutting. Bener-ib stuffed cloths against the bleeding surface. Neferet’s hand was trembling, her heart hammering in her chest until she felt faint. But her surgery had only just begun. She left a longer flap of skin and muscle in the rear with which to close the stump. Now only the bones held the foot to its leg. She reached out for the saw, and Mut-tuy passed it to her. It was still dripping with wine. She began to saw.
The bones were both hard and spongy—like wet wood. Severing them seemed to take forever.
Mut-tuy and one of the men held the leg down tight.
Neferet’s face was afire with effort, and her nerves buzzed with the pitiless zip of the blade going back and forth. At last, the saw fell through, and she stepped back, limp, wiping her forehead, while Bener-ib tamponed the blood with cloth after cloth.
Mut-tuy handed her the needle threaded with a long strand of gut.
“Ibet, can you sew? I’m done for.”
Bener-ib was showing remarkable fortitude. Despite her pallor, the hand with which she took the needle was firm. She had the capacity to push everything out of her mind except the task of the moment.
After an apparently endless time hunched over the patient’s ankle, she straightened up. “It’s finished. You’ll have to leave him here overnight, at least, and probably for several days. We want to be sure this doesn’t start to bleed too much.”
CHAPTER 17
The men, who were evidently shaken, babbled their thanks. “Can we have his wife come?”
“Of course.”
As Neferet showed them out, Bener-ib bandaged the stump into a great bundle full of wadding. “Oh, Ibet, that was the most horrible moment of my life. I’m not meant to be a surgeon.”
“You did a splendid job, Nef’et. Those bones were so clean—I never could have done it myself. Djefat-nebty would be very proud of you.”
The two young doctors fell into each other’s arms, emotionally exhausted.
Mut-tuy, looking shaken, watched them from under her brows.
“I guess we won’t be going home tonight, eh? And we don’t have any beds here, not even for this poor fellow. He’ll have to stay on the worktable.”
“We’ll use up all our sepen if we have to, and he won’t even know what he’s lying on. It’s apparently being grown around here now and isn’t as expensive as it used to be,” Bener-ib said.
“That’s good news.” Neferet turned to Mut-tuy. “Go ahead and take the children home, my girl. I’d like to keep it quiet around here for the rest of the evening. And tell Lord Ptah-mes what’s happened. He’s still waiting to know how the meeting with the Hurrian turned out.”
But the girl’s reaction was swift and firm. “No. I want to stay.”
Neferet glared at her, not in the mood to fight. “Normally, you can’t wait to get away from the dispensary, and now nobody can pry you away. Could you just once do what you’re asked?”
“That’s because it’s normally as boring as can be. Nothing but little twerps with boo-boos on their fingers.”
Neferet heaved a martyred sigh. “Oh, all right. Tell Nurse to take them home, then. You can throw all the bloody cloths in a pile to take to the laundrymen.”
“What do we do with this pitiful foot?” Bener-ib prodded the severed object.
“Throw it to the dogs, I guess.”
But the little sunet looked dubious. “Do we want them to get a taste for human flesh?”
“Wrap it up and toss it in the River when we take the laundry.” Where we’re giving the crocodiles a taste for human flesh.
