House of Two Pharaohs, page 4
Taita opened his eyes as the growl of his belly dragged him back to the present. He allowed the slaves to dress him in a clean robe of white silk and apply his green malachite eyeshadow, as their brothers from the kitchens carried in bowls of figs and pomegranates drizzled in honey, roasted partridge with chickpeas, and fried pastries accompanied by a pitcher of beer.
By the time he had eaten his fill, the shadows of evening were creeping across the city and a cooling breeze had rustled in from the north. Refreshed, Taita sauntered through the palace gates and made his way back through the narrow streets to the Temple of Ptah, the citizens of Memphis, young and old, scarcely able to believe what they were witnessing as he passed.
Outside the vault, Piay strode back and forth, huddling every now and then in conversation with two scribes and listening intently as the guards hurried out in turn to detail the items that had been accounted for.
‘What news do you have for me?’ Taita asked.
Piay strode over. ‘Your suspicions were correct,’ he admitted. ‘There is a quantity of gold missing.’
‘From a sealed chamber. What wondrous magic has been worked here?’ Taita said with an ironic smile.
The guards and the scribes gathered round, eager to hear what their toils had produced.
‘Though the how and the why of Djau-Aa’s murder is not yet readily apparent, you can now let go of your fears,’ Taita said. ‘Gold has been stolen from the vault. From this fact, we can deduce with certainty that this crime was, in fact, committed by a man. For what supernatural entity – what god, what ghost or djinn – has use for material riches?’
‘But what then did the scribe mean by making the mark of Anubis?’ one of the guards asked, clearly still perturbed despite Taita’s reassurances.
‘You are making the assumption that he made it,’ Taita replied.
‘Who else?’ Piay retorted.
‘The killer.’
Piay scoffed. ‘Why would the killer go to the trouble of drawing the sign of Anubis in his victim’s blood?’
‘To send a message, Piay,’ Taita replied evenly. ‘He wanted those who discovered his crime to believe it is indeed the work of Anubis, and for the rumour to be spread. He intended to sow fear . . .’
Piay narrowed his eyes, but found that he could not refute his master’s logic.
‘Nevertheless,’ Taita continued, ‘it is a sign, in more ways than one, and it will ultimately point us to the perpetrator. This murder, and the theft that Djau-Aa seems to have stumbled upon, could only have been committed by someone with remarkable abilities. On the morrow we must continue with fresh eyes. We will find out how it was done.’
• • •
L
ike a bull shark drawn by the scent of blood, the crimson-sailed skiff cleaved through the deep waters of the Nile. Three sentinels braced themselves in the prow as the reddening sun began to sink towards the horizon, their arms hanging with the measured looseness of fighting men who never let their fingers stray too far from the hilts of their swords.
From where he limped along beyond the whispering reed beds, Hannu watched the vessel pass. Others would not have given it a second glance, but Hannu was always alert to that which seemed out of place. It had saved his life many times.
On his meandering journey north from Memphis, Hannu had glimpsed many similar men. They were almost always in twos or threes, on boats whisking through the fast water. What their business was, he could not tell, but their grim determination clearly set them apart from the other watermen who navigated the great river – those hauling bales or catching fish.
Something was afoot in the Lower Kingdom, Hannu was certain of it – like storm clouds gathering over the Great Green. Squatting on a granite waymarker, he lifted the waterskin from his side and swallowed a draught. The day was getting cooler, the wind growing stronger, bringing the sticky taint of rot from the swamps in the delta upriver.
Hannu frowned. Another night sleeping in a ditch when he could have been in his soft bed in the palace in Memphis; another day fishing in the muddy shallows to fill his belly, instead of enjoying dishes piled high with delicacies prepared by the nomarch’s kitchens.
Since leaving the city, Hannu had trekked north along the banks of the Nile, wrapped in a worn woollen cloak and carrying a sack of meagre possessions, so that to anyone he passed he resembled nothing more than a poor merchant’s assistant. He was short and stocky, and with his limp he appeared no threat to anyone.
From time to time Hannu had begged passage on skiffs sailing downriver towards the delta. He had struck up conversations with the sailors, maintaining a light tone, gossiping about the new Pharaoh until he casually turned the talk to the raids on the caravans. But most of them had heard nothing about the attacks, and those who had merely grunted and shrugged. Their lives were harsh and filled with toil. What did they care about thieves on the road, so long as they were left untouched themselves? When Hannu persisted with his questions, they suggested it might be a band of Hyksos warriors, looting what they could before they fled back to their homeland. Or perhaps the Shrikes, those fearsome thieves whom some said still operated in the Lower Kingdom.
A cry jolted Hannu from his thoughts and he leapt to his feet. His hand instinctively went to his waist, to where his sword would normally have hung, but he had left it in his chamber in the nomarch’s palace in Memphis – a merchant’s assistant would not carry a soldier’s weapon. The only blade he had was a short knife tucked into his belt.
The cry came again, this time spiralling into a high-pitched keening. It was the sound of a woman in distress. Hannu lurched along the dusty track, following the sound, until he came to its source – a woman on her knees, hands pressed to her face, rocking back and forth as she cried. Her dress was shabby, her skin weather-beaten.
A man loomed over her, scowling. He had seen around forty floods by the look of him – his head unshaven, dirt clotted under his nails. His kilt was mottled with stains.
‘What’s happening here?’ Hannu demanded.
The woman looked up, tears streaking her face. ‘My daughter!’ she cried.
‘One of the river crocodiles must have taken her,’ the man said. ‘There’s nothing to be done for her now.’
Scrambling to her feet, the woman grabbed at Hannu’s tunic. ‘No!’ she pleaded. ‘That can’t be! She’s an obedient girl. She knew to keep away from the reed beds and the shallows where the crocodiles hunt.’
The man snorted. ‘When did children ever listen to their parents?’
‘You must help me to find her,’ the woman begged.
Hannu looked from the mother’s tear-rimmed eyes to the man standing coldly behind her. ‘Who are you?’
‘A fisherman.’ The man shrugged. ‘I heard her cries, like you did.’
With his last word, the man’s eyes darted towards the reeds. Hannu’s senses prickled. Something was not right here, of that he was certain, and Hannu was not the type of man to ignore it when something was amiss. ‘Where did you last see your daughter?’ he asked the woman.
‘Follow in the girl’s footsteps and you’ll find the same fate,’ the man grunted.
Hannu ignored the warning. He would deal with the fisherman once he had found the girl.
Taking him by the hand, the woman tugged Hannu along the path to a line of date palms swaying in the breeze. ‘I left her here,’ she said, pointing to a slab of rock. ‘I’d lost my necklace on the path and went back to search for it.’
The woman opened her fingers to show Hannu her jewellery, a mean thing made of painted clay balls and the bones of waterfowl. One of the clay balls was larger than the others and painted in rough strokes with the Eye of Horus – a lucky charm to ward off misfortune.
Hannu dropped his eyes to the mica dust that lay around the rock. In his youth he had been a decent scout, and here he could see the ghosts of prints. One of the marks was long and deeper than the others. The girl had been dragged into the reed beds. But by what, he couldn’t be sure.
Perhaps it had been a crocodile. When they were hunting, they could move like the wind. Clamped in those jaws, the woman’s daughter would have been in no state to call for help. But the rock on which the girl had been sitting was far enough away from the water – she should have seen the creature coming for her and, Hannu thought, had time to scramble away.
Hannu followed the tracks to where the reeds began and peered out across the chest-high wall of green papyrus. If a crocodile slumbered there after consuming its prey, he wouldn’t see it until it was too late.
‘Don’t expect me to come to your rescue,’ the fisherman called out behind him.
Hannu glanced back at the man and weighed what he saw in his face.
‘Wait here for me,’ he said sternly to the woman.
• • •
H
annu’s fingers closed around the handle of his knife as he staggered into the sucking mud at the river’s edge. As he pushed through the reeds, he noted that some of the rushes had been broken, as if someone – or something – had already passed the same way.
His heart thumped in his chest. He had seen one of the great beasts bite a man clean in half, but he pushed the memory aside. He trusted his instincts, and something here felt unnatural.
The chilly river water crept up his legs until it reached his waist. Hannu gripped his dagger in his right hand as he pushed back the final curtain of reeds with his left. On the other side, a small skiff had been moored, so old that it barely looked river-worthy. The bunches of reeds that had been bound together to form the hull were fraying, and in places had been roughly and ineffectively patched.
A man crouched in the stern – his limbs lean and his eyes shrouded by overhanging brows.
Waiting, Hannu thought.
Catching sight of him, the man’s mouth fell open in surprise, then twisted into a grimace. ‘What do you want?’ he growled.
‘A lost child.’ Hannu held the sailor’s gaze.
‘A child, you say? Aye . . . aye . . . A crocodile dragged a girl from the bank. She’s long gone now.’ The man feigned a sad expression. ‘These things happen.’
Hannu had seen better performances from the drunkards who begged outside the taverns in Thebes. He glanced towards the prow. A bundle of what looked like old rags lay there, stained and threadbare. As Hannu watched, it twitched.
The man must have seen Hannu’s expression shift, for he snarled and his hand dipped to his kilt’s waistband.
Before the boatman could grab his weapon, Hannu lunged. Though water surged around him, it didn’t slow him. Lashing out like a cobra, his left hand caught the man’s tunic, wrenching him over the side of the skiff. His cry bubbled away as he was plunged beneath the surface of the river and water flooded into his mouth.
The boatman writhed like an eel, desperately trying to break Hannu’s grasp. As Hannu strengthened his hold on the man’s tunic, pushing him down into the river’s muddy bed, something snagged in his cloak and he felt the prick of bronze against his side. He realised that the boatman was stabbing up blindly with his knife even as he drowned in the frothing brown water. If he could ram his blade into Hannu’s groin, the fight would be over.
Hannu thrust down with his own knife – once, twice, three times – until a dark cloud swirled to the surface and the churning water stilled.
With his foot, Hannu pushed the body out into the current. Here was a real feast for the river crocodiles. They’d scent the blood soon enough.
Hauling himself into the flimsy skiff, careful to avoid upending it, Hannu crawled to the bundle of rags and rested one hand upon it.
At his touch, the movement under the cloth intensified and he heard a whimper. Leaning close, he whispered: ‘Do not fear. I am here to help you.’
The convulsions stopped. With his knife, Hannu sawed through the restraining layers of material until the bundle of rags fell apart to reveal a girl of about six, lean and tanned nut-brown, her eyes wide with terror. Her wrists and ankles had been bound with coarse rope and a strip of cloth had been used to gag her.
Hannu pressed his finger to his lips and the girl seemed to understand. He sliced through her bonds and she collapsed into him, trembling. Relieved that she was alive, Hannu folded his muscular arms around her, comforting her as best he could. Then he murmured: ‘Let’s get you back to your mother. But you must be as quiet as a mouse, do you understand?’
The girl nodded, her eyes overflowing with tears.
Hannu pulled up the anchor – a large stone attached to a greasy hide rope – then grasped the oar and guided the vessel along the edge of the reed beds.
So intense was his fury that he barely noticed his surroundings. There was a grim trade in young girls, to the brothels in the cities and even beyond Egypt’s borders. He had nothing but fierce loathing for men who engaged in it.
Leaning on the oar, Hannu steered the skiff around the rushes until it bumped against the muddy bank. He clambered out and reached out a hand to pull the girl onto firm ground. She was clearly in shock, but he hoped that she was young enough that in time the memories would fade.
Still holding her hand, Hannu limped along the track to where he had left the mother and the fisherman. By the time he glimpsed the two figures, his anger burned white-hot and he gripped his knife so tightly it shook in front of him.
With a jubilant cry that startled the fisherman, the girl freed her hand from Hannu’s and ran towards her mother, who swept her arms around her daughter, sobbing and laughing at the same time.
The fisherman’s eyes grew wide with terror as he saw the old soldier’s fury. He spun on his heel and raced away along the path. Hannu drew his knife, grasping it by the blade, carefully measuring the growing distance between him and the fleeing kidnapper, before letting it fly. His wounded leg might no longer possess the strength that it once had, but his arm was as strong as ever. With a sickening thwack, the knife buried itself up to its hilt in the fisherman’s back, and he collapsed headlong into the mud with a piercing cry.
Hannu approached the kidnapper, bringing his foot down on the wretched man’s shoulder as he attempted to rise. The fisherman cried out again and slumped in the mud.
‘I warn you not to move again,’ Hannu growled, leaning down and savagely ripping the dagger from his captive’s shoulder, prompting a shrill scream. ‘Try it, and I will gladly send your wretched soul into the afterlife.’
With this, Hannu knelt heavily on the fisherman’s back and began cutting strips of fabric from the man’s clothing before using them to bind his wrists.
After he had checked the firmness of his work, Hannu sheathed his knife, stepped on the fisherman’s back to press him into the mud once more for good measure, then lifted his sopping, wounded prize to his feet, dragging him along behind him.
Once she had wiped away her tears of joy, the mother stood and in a wavering voice said: ‘I owe you everything.’ She held out her broken necklace. ‘Please, take this.’
Hannu shook his head. ‘I am happy your daughter is safe. I need no other reward.’
‘You risked your life for her. This is all I own of any value –’
‘I do not need anything.’ Hannu thought for a moment. ‘Except, perhaps, some information.’
The woman seemed pleased to be able to provide something. ‘Please, ask whatever you want. I do not know if I’ll be able to help, but on my daughter’s life, I will try.’
‘I’m an old soldier,’ Hannu began. ‘I fought the Hyksos for many years, but one of the barbarians buried his axe in my leg, and I haven’t had work since. I’ve been following men – men like me, who were once soldiers, perhaps – travelling north on the river.’
The woman paled, her eyes flashing anxiously to the fisherman. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You haven’t seen these men?’
‘No.’
Hannu looked at her dubiously. ‘On your daughter’s life, you said.’
The woman hugged her daughter tightly in her arms. Finally, she looked up at Hannu. ‘Avaris,’ she whispered at last. ‘They are going to Avaris.’
Hannu’s brow furrowed at the mention of the old Hyksos capital, far to the north. He knew it well from past adventures. ‘Why? Have the Hyksos returned?’
The woman shook her head fearfully. ‘I know no more than that. Some of the men in my village have gone.’
‘What sort of men?’ Hannu asked.
‘Fighting men. Men who would be soldiers, if the Lower Kingdom had any army to fight for.’ She regarded the wounded fisherman bitterly. ‘Men like him, if he were more like you and had any sense of honour.’
Hannu eyed his captive, who avoided his gaze. ‘Men like him,’ he mused.
‘The woman is crazy,’ the fisherman stammered. ‘I don’t know anything about men bound for Avaris.’
Hannu withdrew the knife from its sheath and shrugged. ‘Then you are of no use to me.’
‘No, wait!’
‘You had best be ready to tell the truth. That is, if you value your wretched life at all.’
‘There is a tavern there, beside the wall that faces the rising sun. Go there after dark and wait for the man who wears the black robe with the white sash.’
‘How do you know this?’
The fisherman eyed him contemptuously. ‘Your accent. You are from the Upper Kingdom?’
Hannu nodded proudly. ‘Thebes.’
‘That is why you don’t know about the tavern. Every man of fighting age across Lower Egypt has heard of it. Many have answered the summons.’
‘But you have not.’ Hannu glared at the fisherman. ‘Who is this man in the robe? Is he an Egyptian?’
The fisherman shook his head, his eyes suddenly wide with fear. ‘I will tell you nothing more. The rest you must learn for yourself.’
