Flowers of Evil, page 4
Neferet felt the slow burn of anger rising up her cheeks, building steam in her nose. So that’s the way it is, eh? She forced herself to maintain a civil expression, but her smile rattled a little at the edges as if it were coming undone. “Actually,” she said too brightly, “we studied in the household of Lord Pentju, the vizier and former royal physician. We were the royal sunets ourselves under Ankhet-khepru-ra. If you don’t believe me, ask our Sun God.”
Instead of looking impressed, Djed-har burst out laughing—a metallic, contemptuous whinny. “I’m sure you were. Just be aware that people’s lives are at stake in your little fantasy, my dear.”
She gritted her molars. “What are your qualifications, if I may ask? Because if you’re a specialist, we may want to refer our patients to you.” Over my dead body.
“I studied at the greatest medical school in the world at Sau,” he said, lifting his chin. “My teacher was the inimitable Lord Iry, who proudly bore the title Shepherd of the Anus.”
“So you specialize in shit. Good to know.” Neferet bared her teeth in an icy smile. There’s no point talking about any division of labor with this dung heap. He doesn’t think we’re even real sunets. Then an idea wiggled its naughty way into her thoughts. She asked innocently, “Would you mind writing down a good poultice to cool the anus? We’ve got lots of patients who are... overheated.”
Djed-har’s eyes shifted back and forth in a flash of fear, then he tossed his head and said in a belittling tone, “Real professionals don’t give away their cures so lightly, little lady.”
“Little lady.” That does it, thought Neferet, her simmer becoming a furious boil. But she realized she had learned something. This man doesn’t know how to write. I’ll bet he’s never been near Sau.
She held onto her temper just long enough to say a semi-civil goodbye and get back out into the street. The gate slammed behind them. “What an utter and abominable fraud!”
“Isn’t Lady Bener-ib from Sau? She’ll know whether he studied there.”
“She certainly will. Her father taught there at the House of Life.” Neferet stumped away, heading inland at a fierce pace, propelled by her outrage. She thrust out a hand to Mut-tuy at her side. “Give me one of those sesame treats, please, my girl. I was going to let Djed-har have some, but he started lying the minute he showed up. He wasn’t seeing a patient—he was eating.”
“Grown-ups are disgusting,” said Mut-tuy, and there was real disenchantment in her voice. She’d seen a lot of evidence in her thirteen years. The two of them ate as they walked, chewing with as much gusto as if it were Djed-har between their teeth.
“I’ll bet anything he’s warned everybody away from our practice. I really, really want to see him exposed for the fraud he is,” Neferet growled.
“What if Lady Bener-ib doesn’t remember whether he was at Sau or not?”
Neferet gave a carnivorous smile. “Oh, she’ll remember. Ibet has the most formidable memory in the Two Lands. She could repeat to you word for word what her first nursemaid told her at the age of three.”
They walked on in silence, jaws working. Only five sesame treats were left by the time they entered the brightly painted gate of the infirmary.
Bener-ib greeted them hopefully at the door of the dispensary. “Did you have any luck, Nef’et?”
Neferet was ready to vent. “He’s the biggest dog turd under the sun. He said he trained at Sau, but he doesn’t even know how to read, I’d bet anything. I think every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie. And then he gave me the ‘little lady’ and ‘my dear’ routine. Aagh!” She stamped her foot. “When I think that our neighbors are in his clutches, and here we are, well trained and ready to serve, and everybody is afraid to come because he tells them we’re just rich little dilettantes, I want to scream.”
“How awful.” Bener-ib’s very hair seemed to droop—she was so crestfallen. “I don’t remember anybody at Sau named Djed-har, but maybe he’s older.”
“Our parents’ age, I’d guess, although there was a dried-out look about him. He said he studied under somebody called Iry.”
“The Shepherd of the Anus? But he lived more than a hundred years ago. My father mentioned him as if he were a god from ancient times.”
Neferet and Mut-tuy exchanged looks of disgust.
“If Djed-har’s been around for a hundred years, that explains why he looks dried out,” said the girl with a sneer.
Neferet pounded one fist into the other palm. “We’re going to win over that liar’s patients if it takes the rest of my life, I swear. May Sekhmet make my hair grow in green if we don’t. May I sprout a tail, and may worms come out my nose—”
“Oh, don’t say that! What if it really happened?” Bener-ib cried in horror. She made a frantic little gesture to ward off bad luck.
But Mut-tuy laughed savagely. “I want to see it.”
All at once, Neferet remembered that Bener-ib hadn’t had any of the sesame cakes yet. She held out the basket. “These are for you, Ibet. Eat them now, and we’ll take the basket back to Sit-amen. I’d like to hear what Djed-har has told everybody.”
Her hand hovering over the basket, the young woman asked with her usual self-effacement, “Have the children had all they wanted?”
Neferet slapped herself on the forehead. “Oh no! Sit-amen gave them to us for the little ones, and we ate them all!”
Mut-tuy suppressed a snort of laughter—in her household, it had been every child for himself—and Neferet said matter-of-factly, “Well, we’ll eat lunch at our house, and Mama will have her cook make some more. They’re just as good—believe me. Go ahead and take those.”
The two doctors lingered a while longer on the off chance that some patient might happen in. Then, having discovered that the nursemaid had already marched the younger children home for lunch and a nap, the three of them took off for Mama and Papa’s house. It was closer than Lord Ptah-mes’s and a lot more comfortable. Besides, she hadn’t had a chance to talk to Papa about the dead man and how to pursue his murderer.
As they drew near to the southern suburbs, with its old family villas, Neferet noticed for the first time that the large houses were surrounded by clusters of poorer ones—no doubt residences of the servants of the rich and the artisans who catered to them. She tried to remember if such blocks huddled around the magnificent estate of Lord Ptah-mes. In any case, the idea of a working-class neighborhood was nebulous, she saw. I wonder who the neighborhood healer down here is. Her own family had always consulted a real sunu when one of the children’s escapades had ended in a broken arm or a split lip. And then, of course, there was Baket-iset’s accident.
They drew near to the familiar red gate, and Neferet was flooded with the warmth of all her happy childhood memories. She had never known any other home until the day she married. Well, she and Ibet had lived at the palace on and off, but this had always been home. Like the farm, it had belonged to Grandfather and probably his father before him. A haven of love, the modest villa was always open to guests and relations. The married children and their families were still frequently to be found here, as if strong cords bound them to the big, friendly house and its peaceful gardens, drawing them back and back if they wandered overly far. Her parents were never too busy to welcome visitors.
Neferet knocked eagerly, and the gate was opened not by old A’a, the perennial doorkeeper, but by Iuty, the younger gardener.
“Mistress Neferet! Mistress Bener-ib! The master and mistress will be happy to see you. Your sister is here too.” He stepped back and let the three young women pass.
“But where is A’a?”
“Here, mistress,” said the old man from a stool in the shade of the garden shrine. He grinned and waved a bony hand.
“He’s supervising now,” Iuty said with a wink. “Training me for the job.”
“We’ll have to call you Great One of the Gatekeepers,” Neferet said. The old man was as much a fixture of her childhood as the house.
The three young women passed up the white-graveled walk toward the dwelling, which was set well back in the vegetation, at its lushest in the late-summer-harvest season. Among the bushes, the cicadas blared, and the familiar scent of thyme and sage simmered under the filtered shade of date palms, jujube, and acacia trees. Papa’s pet heron stalked elegantly down the path as if coming to greet them.
“Too bad we ate all the sweets,” murmured Mut-tuy.
Bener-ib looked stricken. “Oh, I should have left some.”
“She’d rather have a juicy frog,” said Papa from behind the pomegranate bushes. He stepped out in front of them, arms wide, and Neferet hurled herself into them.
“What are you lurking around outside for, Papa Duck?” She laughed.
“Observing my fellow ducks.” He gestured vaguely back toward the long rectangular pool, where the family raised carp and bulti. As usual, a flotilla of aquatic fowl paddled about among the waterlilies. “Are you girls going to join us for lunch? Where are the children?”
“They went home with the nurse before we decided to come here. Do you think the cook can make sesame treats before we leave?”
Hani threw up his hands in defense. “You’re asking the wrong person, my duckling. The kitchen is your mother’s domain.”
And when Neferet looked up, there stood her mother in the doorway, tiny and beautiful and as perfectly groomed as if she were singing for the Hidden One. “I thought I heard your voice, my love! Come on in, girls, and join us. Lunch is on the table. And Sati and Maya are here.”
Neferet and Bener-ib hugged her—Bener-ib was marvelously fond of Lady Nub-nefer, who took the place of the mother she had lost too soon. Mut-tuy nodded a self-conscious adolescent acknowledgement, and the five of them trooped into the house.
Even from the vestibule, they could hear the laughter in the salon—Neferet’s two sisters and Maya, her brother-in-law and Papa’s secretary. Then Grandfather said something, and everybody laughed again.
Yahyah! They’re all here! Neferet thought in delight. But then she realized that would make it harder to get into the second reason for their visit. How will I talk about our murder case in front of the family? They would warn her away from it, every one of them.
At her side, her mother said to her father, “You know, my love, a terrible thing happened on the temple grounds last night.” Mama was a chantress of Amen-Ra, and her brother was Third Prophet. Thus, the family knew everything that happened within the sacred walls of the Greatest of Shrines. “The man in charge of floral offerings was stabbed. Who would want to murder a florist?”
CHAPTER 3
“That was our news,” Neferet cried in disappointment.
Any further discussion was cut short by the clamor of welcome as they entered the salon. The doors to the garden were wide open to lure in even a warm midday breeze, and a fluttering greenish light, rich with all the herbal scents of the out-of-doors, washed the normally shadowy room. The family members were seated two by two at the folding tables Neferet had eaten from since she was old enough to sit up—Sati and Maya, Mama and Papa, and Grandfather by himself but leaning over Hani’s just-served plate, probing, no doubt, for pickled turnips. Baket-iset, paralyzed since she fell from a boat half a lifetime ago, smiled happily up from the couch where she lay. Mama went off to tell the servants to set three more places and bring more stools.
“Iyah! Here are our medical girls,” Grandfather said with a big grin that everyone said was identical to Neferet’s and was certainly just like his son’s. “Feel free to eat cabbage, my friends, and let indigestion do its worst.”
“We don’t have cabbage, Grandfather,” said Baket-iset with a laugh. She turned to the newcomers. “Neferet! Bener-ib! And Mut-tuy! How nice you could join us.”
“We came partly to ask a favor of Mama’s cook.”
“Surely Lord Ptah-mes has a cook. Even we have a cook,” Maya said dryly. He was touchy about social status, having been born the son of a goldsmith. Mut-tuy’s late father had been an artisan in her workshop.
“Yes, but nobody makes sesame treats the way Mama’s cook does.”
“It’s our family recipe,” said Mama as she entered at the head of two servants bearing stools and tables. As soon as the latter were unfolded, she set three plates upon them, seating Neferet and Bener-ib together as she would any couple, with Mut-tuy joining Grandfather.
“That florist who was stabbed died in our infirmary.” Neferet washed her fingers in the little dish of perfumed water, enjoying the looks of surprise on the faces of those around her.
His bushy eyebrows rising, Papa said, “He was stabbed on the temple grounds, and they brought him all the way up to you ladies?”
“I think he was actually attacked at his gate as he came home this morning. And one of his litter bearers lives in our neighborhood, so I guess that was the only place they knew about.”
“If they know about it, why don’t they come to us for care?” muttered Mut-tuy.
“It sounds like they did, my girl,” said Maya a little sharply. Neferet knew he didn’t like children to be so forward—except for his own, who regularly monopolized the attention of all the grown-ups.
“Is he the one you said did such beautiful work, Mama?” asked Sati.
“Oh yes. His bouquets are magnificent. I’d love to see the fields where they grow all those gorgeous flowers. And thousands of them—you can imagine how many bouquets the Hidden One enjoys every single day.”
Mama lifted a quail to her mouth with dainty fingers, and Neferet attacked her own with less daintiness, swabbing it in the sorrel sauce. It was definitely an excellent idea to have come here for lunch.
“It seems barbaric to kill a person who makes such beautiful things,” Baket-iset said.
Neferet saw from the corner of her eye that Mut-tuy had stiffened—her father had made beautiful jewels for the king. “And they really cut him up inside. Whoever got him wanted to be sure he was dead. And they knew how to do it. They didn’t just stab—they ripped. All his entrails—”
“Do we have to talk about this at the table, Neferet?” Sati looked a bit green.
“I suppose he had a family,” mused Mama. “Perhaps we should pay our respects. I’m embarrassed to say I’m not sure I even know his name.”
Bener-ib said, “Sen-em-iah son of Nakht.”
“Well, well,” Grandfather said with a belly-shaking chuckle. “I used to do business with old Nakht before he limited his clientele to the king of the gods. I couldn’t compete, I’m afraid.”
“What were you doing with a florist, Father?” asked Papa.
“Why, buying flowers—what did you think? We used to have parties rather frequently in our youth. You were sent up to the nursery, I’m afraid. I remember once Pipi fell down the stairs, where he had crept to spy on the grown-ups. We heard it, of course, and we all came running. There is no perfect crime.”
Papa let out a guffaw. “I remember that too. I was with him, but when he fell, I hotfooted it back up to the nursery. My crime was perfect!”
“But now it’s come to light.” Mama laughed and wagged a warning finger. “Ma’at will make her exaction of you now.”
“My punishment seems to be that we’re out of quail.” Papa eyed the empty serving platter mournfully. He dipped a finger in the congealing sauce and licked it.
Bener-ib pushed her plate toward him. “I haven’t touched this yet, Lord Hani. Please take it. We came unannounced.”
“No, no, my girl. I thank you for your generosity, but this is Ma’at’s way of telling me I don’t need another one.”
At that moment, the serving girl emerged from the kitchen, bearing a second platter piled high with the small golden carcasses in a lake of tart green sauce, trailed by a plume of steam and fragrance.
“Your sacrifice is in vain, my love,” said Mama with a smile. “I told cook to make more when the girls arrived.” She turned a tender gaze on Neferet. “And she’s making sesame treats.”
Papa, with a guilty grin, speared himself a second quail. “Don’t tell the live birds how much I love them cooked.”
When they’d all finished and Grandfather and her sisters had dispersed to their siesta, Neferet hissed, “Papa, I need to talk to you about something. That florist...”
“Should I wait for you outside, Lord Hani?” asked Maya, sliding from his stool. “We were going to do some work, remember?”
“No, my boy. Stay. You can hear whatever Neferet wants to tell me—can’t he, my duckling?”
She made a disappointed moue. “I suppose.”
Maya had aided her father in his investigations over the years. As a dwarf, he could go places the bigger people couldn’t. The one she really would have liked to send off to nap time was Mut-tuy, but the girl refused to catch Neferet’s eye and sat as immovable as a skinny rock next to Bener-ib. They had all drawn the stools into a circle so they could speak quietly.
“Papa, the only thing we know is what Sen-em-iah’s litter bearers and bodyguards told us—he had just arrived at his own gate this morning when a couple of men attacked. The servants succeeded in fighting them off but not before they’d inflicted a fatal and very messy evisceration wound. He was barely alive by the time they got to the dispensary, and he died almost immediately.”
“Well, then,” said Papa, “no culpability on your part. You couldn’t have done anything to save him.”
“Oh, I know. But we need to find out who killed him, don’t we?”
“I don’t know. Do you?” asked Maya in a tone that implied they did not.
“We’re supposed to report murders,” said Mut-tuy defiantly as Neferet gestured for her to shut up.
“At least, it would be nice to appease his ba, don’t you think? We don’t want him haunting people. And there was a lot of odd business around this man, Papa. I think he knew his murderer.”
Papa looked thoughtful. “What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. I just have a feeling, like Grandfather says, in here.” She slapped herself on the belly. “Besides, his dying words were mysterious.”
