Meren could hear the wails and screams before he reached the street where Hormin had lived. Word of the scribe's death had reached his family, and someone had already hired professional mourners to ply their trade on the small loggia that protected the entrance to the house. One tore at her hair. Another beat her breasts and moaned. The third shrieked on such a high note that Meren covered his ears. His two assistants did the same.
He had seen better performances. Whoever hired the mourners had not paid enough to get the extras. No rak ing of nails on flesh, no throwing of earth over the body. Meren hurried by the women, only to encounter the household porter. The man bowed several times, but Meren gave him no chance to protest the intrusion, ordering the porter to conduct him to the family.
Once they were inside, the screams of the mourners faded. The porter led him through an entryway, a columned outer hall, and up a staircase. Meren was halfway up the stairs when a shout made him look up. This was not a wail of grief, but a voice climbing the musical scale in wrath. Like the honking of disturbed geese, voices warred with one another. As Meren gained the second floor he heard a woman yell. It was a sound made powerful by healthy lungs, a noise that filled the world with its clamor.
"Robbery! You picking and sneaking thief. Whore." A man's voice joined in. "She took the broad collar." Meren swept by the porter and into the room from which the noise came. Before him were four people standing in the midst of a litter of papers, open boxes and caskets, chairs, and tables. Meren paused inside the door. One of the women cursed. She picked up something from a table and hurled it at the two men. They ducked and the missile sped past them to crash at Meren's feet. It was a faience spice pot. The pottery cracked and red powder burst forth, spraying Meren's gold sandals and feet.
The woman who had thrown the pot squeaked and ducked behind a chair. Meren looked from his sandals to the woman. She was young, with long arms and legs strung with tense muscles and a short, sharp nose like the beak of a sparrow.
Knowing that he had startled them all, Meren directed his gaze to each of the quarrelers. The older woman was looking at him with a puzzled expression. She had the dark brown skin of a peasant but the uncallused hands of a lady. Standing in front of her was a man as tall as she was, who had not made a sound when the others were shouting at the young woman. Beside him was a shorter man, a youth really. He balanced on the balls of his feet and caressed one of his wrists with his hand. Twisting the wrist back and forth within the grasp of his fingers, he stared at Meren.
They were trying to decide who he might be. It was a favorite tactic of his to appear without announcement, to disturb and unbalance. He knew they were taking in the transparent robe that fell to his ankles and covered a kilt belted in red and gold. His long court wig and inlaid dagger would cause apprehension, as would the two men who stood behind him like bodyguards, for
30 Lynda 5. Robinson only a great man walks abroad in fine linen, carries a warrior's blade, and commands charioteers.
"I am Meren." The name caused a stirring among them like papyrus reeds shifting in the north wind. Four heads lowered, and Meren received their bows. "Evil has been done in the sacred place of embalming, and I am sent to hunt out the criminal who murdered the scribe Hormin."
Lifting his foot out of a hillock of spice, Meren skirted the shards of faience and took a chair of cedar with legs shaped like those of a lion.
"There has been theft in this house?" Meren asked.
Four heads nodded.
"Last night?"
Again the nods.
Meren looked from one bowed head to the other and decided to break up the solid phalanx. If he confronted each of them alone, it would be impossible for them to remain silent.
"I will survey the house and question each of the family." Meren nodded at the older woman. "You, mistress, are the wife of Hormin?"
"Yes, my lord."
This was the voice of the woman who had yelled as he came upstairs.
'Take your family to the dining hall and await my summons." It was his experience that the anxiety of waiting to be examined by one of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh loosened tongues.
One of his men ushered the family out and went with mem. When they were gone Meren summoned the porter, who produced the chief manservant. With this guide and his remaining assistant, Meren toured the house of Hormin.
It was the house of a prosperous scribe; there were many such in the capital of the empire. A basement housed workrooms used for weaving, bread making, and other chores. Above lay a reception hall and dining room, and above these the family bedrooms and lavatory. On the roof was the kitchen.
To Meren the house appeared ordinary. White-plastered, painted with friezes of lotus petals and geometric designs in bright red, blue, yellow, and green, it contained simple furnishings. The beds, tables, stools, and chairs were of good but not costly wood, the seats of woven rushes.
On the way back from his tour, Meren stuck his head in the door of the scribe's bedchamber. The bed sat at the far end; clothing boxes and a cosmetic table were arranged around the walls. One of his men knelt at a box that held Hormin's kilts, lifted each one, and laid it on the floor.
Meren turned away and headed for the room where he'd first encountered Hormin's family, the man's personal office. Here the furniture was of cedar inlaid with ebony and ivory. Gilt paint adorned Hormin's chair and table, and there were three boxes and four storage caskets, each of expensive wood. One was inlaid with ivory and ebony marquetry. Several alabaster lamps rested on tables, and there was one casket carved from the same stone.
All of the containers bore Hormin's name. Meren touched the obsidian knob on the lid of the alabaster casket, lifted the cover, and placed it aside. Within were fourteen glass bottles and vials. Meren unstopped a vial and sniffed the perfume within. He opened a pot and touched the tip of his finger to the salve within. It was unguent; from the scent, costly unguent, made of foreign spices and resins. Yet it wasn't the same as that he'd found on Hormin's kilt.
Replacing the unguent, Meren summoned the porter and ordered him to bring the wife of Hormin to him. He arranged himself in Hormin's chair and picked up a gilt penholder from the table beside him. Removing the top, he shook out several reed pens and replaced them. He was twirling the penholder when the porter announced Selket, the wife of Hormin.
She must have been of an age with her husband, for Selket bore the signs of middle age. There were pockets of flesh beneath her eyes. The flesh of her upper arms drooped like empty barley sacks, and her skin was as cracked and dry as old wood left in the desert. Without speaking to her, Meren knew that this woman had spent her youth laboring in the sun and heat. She stood before him with her eyes fixed on sheets of papyrus scattered on the floor at her feet. Meren gave her permission to sit, and the woman took a stool.
"Please accept my condolences upon the death of your husband, mistress. I'm here to seek out his murderer."
Selket's face had been as blank as the outfacing wall of a house. At his words, it cracked open and from it erupted a flood of venom.
"It's her. She killed him for his wealth or to hide her depravities. She beds any pretty man who comes into her sight, you know. My husband must have found her out." Selket's arms swept around indicating the disturbed room. "Or perhaps she killed him for finding her in his office pilfering."
"Who?"
"Beltis, my lord. That creature who tried to wound you with the spice pot. She is my-was my husband's concubine."
This was why Meren cultivated the skill of listening. He remembered the admonition of the sage Ptahhotep, which advised a wise man not to listen to the spouting of the hot-bellied. He had found that listening to the hot-bellied often led to the discovery of the truth.
Meren set the penholder back on the table and re garded Selket. "You're telling me that you know the girl killed your husband? You will go before the royal magistrates and give testimony?"
Selket started to speak, then closed her mouth. Her lips pinched together and she shook her head. Meren lifted a brow, but made no comment. She was unwilling to risk the punishment for bearing false witness, but her reticence might not signal an untruth. After all, she could be beaten and starved for three days, or even put to death, for perjury.
"What was the course of your husband's last day?' Meren asked.
"It was like most days," Selket said. "He rose. From her bed. And he ate his morning meal here. Then she came in while I was serving him, and demanded some trinket." Each time Selket referred to the concubine, she hissed out the word "she" as though it tasted of dung. "She is always complaining that she has no jewelry, not enough shifts or wigs or cosmetics."
As he listened to Selket, Meren became aware of his own vague uneasiness. At first he couldn't understand his discomfort, but then he realized that the woman talking to him shifted from fury to complacency and back again in half a heartbeat. When she spoke of Beltis, her eyes took on the look of a rabid hyena, yet moments before she'd mentioned Hormin with a sweet lilt in her voice.
"And after he dined, your husband went to the office of records and tithes," Meren said. "He spoke to no one else before he left?"
Selket had been breathing rapidly from the force of her ire. Suddenly she smiled. "Only to me, about the house, and about our sons. They were avoiding him be cause he was still a bit angry with them. Imsety, my oldest, wanted the old farm since Hormin dislikes husbandry. Djaper supported Imsety, but Hormin wouldn't give it up. It gives us a prosperous living with Hormin's wages. Imsety would have still handed over the proper share to his father, but Hormin was furious at the idea." Selket waved a hand. "Sons and fathers will contend, no matter a mother's wishes."
Meren got up, motioning for Selket to remain where she was. He stooped and picked up a sheaf of papers, household accounts.
"Go on, mistress."
"My husband went to the office of records and tithes and returned at midday. He ate and went to her, but they fought again. I could hear her shouting at him even though they were in her room. She wanted Hormin to give her a set of bracelets, and he wouldn't."
Selket laughed, and Meren winced at the loud, barking sound.
"I heard him slap her, then he left and didn't return until afternoon. After he was gone, Beltis ran away."
Meren cocked his head to the side. The heavy strands of his wig swung to his shoulder, and he nodded for her to continue.
Selket sniffed. "She runs away all the time. To her parents in the tomb-makers' village on the west bank. Hormin always fetches her back. He did yesterday, unfortunately. When they returned, we all dined." Selket paused and contemplated her brown hands. "My husband spent the rest of the evening with her, and I know nothing of what they did. When I rose this morning, I didn't know he was gone from the house until Djaper couldn't find him. It was while we were looking for my husband that we found his office wrecked and looted.
Murder in the Place of Anubis 35
Later, a priest came from the Place of Anubis and told me that he was dead."
Selket pressed her lips together, and Meren was sur: prised to see a tear creep out of the corner of one eye.
He would never understand some women. She mourned Hormin; he would have been tempted to put the man in his house of eternity long ago.
"And your sons," Meren said. "You say they quarreled with their father."
The flow of tears dammed up at once, and Selket shook her head. "Only a little. They are dutiful sons. Imsety takes care of the farm outside the city. He only came to ask about getting the deed put in his name, and he'll have to go back soon, to oversee the harvest. Djaper follows the path of his father, and I hope he'll take Hormin's place at the office of records and tithes."
Meren shuffled the papyrus sheets in his hands. Tak ing his seat again, he laid the papers on the table nearby. One of his assistants would question the servants so that stories about the family's movements could be confirmed. He expected everyone to claim to have slept through the night, for unless one were privileged, work was hot and long. The day began with first light and ended with nightfall.
Tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair, Meren contemplated the furrows between Selket's brow. The woman was little more than a housekeeper to her hus band. Her resentment bubbled on the surface like molten copper in a smith's crucible. The two women worried over Hormin, two jackals fighting over a carcass. Hormin had been enamored of the concubine Beltis, yet he hadn't set aside his wife. Why?
"Mistress," Meren said. "Your husband was the son of a butcher who attained the honored position of scribe. You must have been proud."
Selket's weather-roughened features relaxed, and Meren caught a glimpse of a young woman whose eyes were bright with pride and whose face wasn't parched from the heat of resentment.
"He worked so hard, and he was so careful to attend to the officials who could place him well. When he was given the position of scribe of records and tithes, we held a feast." Selket's smile turned into a frown. "But the seasons went by with no other advancement. Hormin saw others less talented but more capable of flattery raised above him. Only a few weeks ago he learned that Bakwerner would be set above him."
In spite of his much-practiced control, Meren started when Selket's voice rose abruptly and she beat one fist into her palm with a force that would leave a bruise.
Clasping her hands together, Selket leaned toward Meren. "My lord, Hormin was an unhappy man. He told me that Bakwerner was jealous because he knew that Hormin was a better seribe." As she went on, Selket's voice got louder. "It was unfair that my husband wasn't preferred. He waited for so long. Why, if he had been given his due, he would never have taken Beltis. What is she but a burden?"
"A burden?" Meren asked. Selket gave her head a lit tle shake and appeared to remember with whom she was talking. She quieted.
"She is lazy, my lord. She does no chores. She doesn't help with the cooking. All she does is tend to herself. She bathes and arranges her hair and puts on lotions and ointments and cosmetics. And then she goes to the courtyard and lies in the shade or walks to the market to purchase trinkets for herself." Selket lowered her voice. "And she opens her legs for other men. She is a fiend; she doesn't even tend to her little son. Hormin purchased a slave girl to do that."
Murder in the Place of Anubis 37
Meren rose and went to an alcove that held a statue of the god Toth, patron of scribes. He contemplated the man's body and ibis head while he waited for Selket to continue. When she remained silent, he glanced back at her. She was chewing on her lip and eyeing him. He'd seen that look of apprehension before in those who suspect that they have said more than they should.
"Beltis wanted to supplant you?" Meren said this while he resumed his stroll about the room. Avoiding the scattered contents of a jewel box, he stopped to run his fingertips over the lid of a casket.
"But my lord," Selket said. She smiled with the open grimace of a monkey. "Beltis never understood Hormin as I did. If she had, she would have known he would never divorce me. Our marriage agreement provides for a generous settlement for me if we part. Hormin and I, we know what it is to work, and to need. We don't give up what is ours."
Contemplating Selket's expression of pleasure, Meren nodded. "One thing more. When I arrived you were all fighting about a robbery. You say someone has taken objects from this room. What is missing?"
"I'm not sure. Hormin never allowed anyone in here by themselves, and he kept the valuables under his own hand. Djaper says he saw his father place a broad collar in that casket." Selket pointed to an ebony and ivory container. "He said it had beads of gold, lapis lazuli, and red jasper. I've never seen it, but then, Djaper often worked here with his father, and the piece was new. He promised it to her."
Selket glanced around the room. "There is an inven tory somewhere. Djaper also says there are copper ingots missing. She probably stole them."
Meren turned around to face Selket. She was angry at the loss of such rich pieces, but there was no sign of apprehension, or awareness that it was odd that Hormin owned a necklace of gold and precious stones and hadn't given it to her. It was as if she were long used to her husband's miserliness. Perhaps she was. In any case, he couldn't believe she didn't covet such a beautiful piece of jewelry as the missing broad collar.
He was about to dismiss Selket when a crash made the woman jump. He was out of the room and bounding down the stairs before Selket got to her feet. Meren rounded the corner of the dining hall in time to dodge a ceramic lamp that sailed past his head and crashed against a wall.
Barely missing the wooden lampstand, Meren rushed into the hall to see the concubine Beltis lift a wine jar from its pedestal and hurl it at her younger brother-in-law. Djaper was bending over Imsety, who was curled up on the floor nursing his groin. Meren shouted at him, and he ducked. The wine jar bounced off Djaper's shoulder and hit the ground. Pottery cracked, and wine sloshed over the groaning Imsety.
Meren ran to Beltis and caught her before she could lift a stone vase from a table. Knocking the vase aside, he grabbed the woman by the waist and lifted her off her feet. Beltis let out a scream. She kicked backward, catching Meren on the shin.
"Abomination." Meren grunted under the impact of an elbow to his ribs.
"Dung eater!" Beltis screamed at Djaper. "Lover of boys, I curse your fea."
Djaper sprang at Beltis. Meren saw him make a fist and draw back his arm. Swinging so that Djaper missed Beltis, he blocked the punch with his free arm. It was a blow of the force one used only on another man. Djaper fell back as soon as his arm touched Meren.
Beltis was still shouting curses at her brothers-in-law while she clawed at Meren's arms. Losing what pa tience was left to him, Meren hoisted the woman on his hip. When she tried to bite his thigh, he shifted her weight to both arms and threw her to the ground. Beltis landed on her buttocks with a howl and looked up for the first time. Panting, she brushed aside strands of her wig and caught sight of Meren. The panting stopped. Her eyelids climbed high and disappeared. Beltis whimpered and began to crawl toward Meren.
In no mood for groveling, Meren halted the concubine with one word. He looked around and spotted a charioteer near Djaper and Imsety. The man was on the floor nursing a cut above his eye. In the doorways of the hall servants hovered, uncertain and curious.
• Surveying the wreckage, Meren beckoned to the por ter. "Put the woman in her room and see that she doesn't leave it."
"Lord, her ka is inhabited by fiends," Djaper said.
Meren straightened the folds of his robe. "What hap pened?"
"I told her to go back to her parents' house. We don't want her here."
Meren surveyed the face of Hormin's youngest son. Clean-shaven, with small features, it was the face of a youth on the body of a man in his breeding years. Djaper met his gaze openly, and Meren was sure that he was meant to see the ingenuous candor of a boy.
"You may both retire to your rooms."
The men bowed to him, and Meren was left to the ministrations of the household servants. A maid offered cool water and beer. Another brought moist towels and salve for the cuts on his arms. The furrows weren't deep, but they stung. Meren tended to them himself, downed a cup of beer, and headed for the room occupied by the woman called Beltis.
40 Lynda 5. Robinson
She was waiting for him. Meren was surprised at how quickly she had recovered from the battle and shock of having lifted her hand to him. She was wearing a fresh shift, a costly one of transparent drapes and folds that fastened below her breasts.
Meren stalked into the chamber and seated himself in an armchair. Beltis walked toward him, and he realized that she had oiled and rouged her bare breasts and lips and applied fresh eye paint. She held her arms to her sides, but she pressed them inward so that her breasts pointed forward and the nipples danced as she moved.
He almost laughed. He would have, but Beltis reached him, dropped to her knees, and flung her arms about his legs. She began whispering abject regrets. Slick flesh pressed against his legs, and her hand fastened on his bare ankle. It slid up his calf. Fingers reached his inner thigh, and Meren caught them.
"Remove yourself from me."
Beltis sat back on her heels and clasped her hands in her lap. Meren noticed that she still held her arms close to her breasts. Her chest heaved, and to his surprise, she appeared unable to lift her eyes from his legs. No, they had moved. By the gods, the woman was staring at his groin.
It had been many seasons since he'd been shocked by a woman. He was shocked by this one. Her tongue laved her lips as once more she studied the brown flesh of his thigh visible through his robe. Suddenly Beltis bent low. Meren felt moist lips on the top of his foot. Hot breath tickled his skin as she whispered to him.
"Forgive me, great lord. I was driven to madness by those cruel men, and now I behold the virility of a lion, such beauty."
"Get up," Meren said. Beltis raised her head. Her lips were slack. He supposed their open readiness had brought rewards before. "I said get up. One would think the death of a generous master would have you weeping with the mourners outside."
Beltis sat up and regarded him as a scribe regards a schoolboy. "Great lord, I served my master according to a contract freely made. If you could speak to him, he would tell you how I pleased him. But the master was cursed with an ungrateful, selfish wife and sons. They are his family, but they don't grieve. Do they abstain from meat and wine? Do Djaper and Imsety fail to cut their hair and beards? Selket still bathes and paints her face. And none of them have gone to Hormin's mortuary chapel to weep for him."
"I'm not interested in weeping. I'm interested in what Hormin did on the night he was killed. Mistress Selket says he spent the night with you."
"Indeed." Beltis smirked at him. "Hormin craved me as a bull lusts after his cows. I gave him much pleasure, with my hands and-"
Meren spoke with deliberate slowness and clearly pronounced words. "When did Hormin leave your bed?"
"I don't know, my lord." Beltis sighed and lifted her shoulders. "I was exhausted from our play and slept heavily. I woke after the sun was up, and the master was gone."
"He told you nothing of where he might go?"
Shaking her head, Beltis cast her eyes down. "I am only a concubine."
"Yes." Meren rose and went to stand behind the chair. "So you heard nothing during the night, even though your master's office isn't far from this room."
Beltis's head shot up. "I didn't need to hear anything. I know one of them robbed my master. They were taking his possessions, and he caught them." The concu 42 Lynda 5. Robinson bine narrowed her eyes. "They fought with my master, lord. Those two sons wanted his farm all to themselves. I heard them yelling at each other."
"How is it that you heard what must have been a private talk?"
"I listened at the door, Lord Meren. I have to protect my son, and you can see why after what happened today. And now they want to blame me for all the evil. They hate me, Selket and Imsety and Djaper. They would like to see me condemned for his death. If he'd lived, Hormin would have given me more of his wealth, and entered my son in his will."
"You witness against all three. Yet you say you slept the night." Meren traced the carving on the back of the chair and waited.
Beltis pursed her lips. "My slave girl, she says the brothers went out after the evening meal and didn't re turn until almost morning. If my poor lord was killed in the Place of Anubis, they could have set upon him."
"All the servants will be questioned," Meren said. "I'll find out where each of you was during the night. Each of you." When Beltis appeared undisturbed, Meren continued. "You were screaming about a necklace being taken when I found you all in Hormin's office."
"Yes, lord, I tell you Djaper took it, or Imsety, or Selket. They all hated it that the master bestowed gifts upon me. This was a broad collar of great beauty and cost. It was of gold and lapis lazuli and red jasper." Beltis chewed on her lower lip and scowled. "The master promised it to me, but it's gone."
Meren said nothing. His men would take inventory of Hormin's possessions and question the household to confirm the family's claims. He resumed his seat, taking care to move the chair so that he was too far away from Beltis for her to pounce on him again. Having basked in the favor of ladies far more sophisticated, intelligent, and lovely than Beltis, he had no desire to be mauled.
"You fought with your master," he said. "On the day of his death you quarreled with him and ran away to the tomb-makers' village on the west bank."
Soft laughter bubbled up at him, and Beltis laid her head to one side. "A quarrel between lovers, my lord. We had many, and always my master begged me to forgive him. He needed me. Why, if he had to do without me for even one night, he was as engorged as a stud ox."
"Spare me your stories of Hormin's lust. What was the quarrel about?"
"I wanted matching bracelets for my new broad collar, and he wouldn't have them made." Beltis tossed her head. "I am a woman of great beauty, and I deserve jewels and fine robes. Hormin made me so angry. He could have given me twenty bracelets if he weren't so greedy. I was angry, so I went away. After all, he is- was so much more generous after a few nights without me."
Meren began to think that Hormin was not only a hot-bellied man, but a fool as well.
"You see, lord, my father is a sculptor in the tomb- makers' village, so it is not far for me to go. I went there yesterday after Hormin slapped me, and I waited for him to come for me. He did, and we made up our quarrel. He even took me to see his tomb before we left. It's on the edge of the nobles' cemetery. Then we came home."
"And during all the time you were together, Hormin never spoke of going to the Place of Anubis, or of anyone who had threatened him?"
"No, great lord." Beltis raised her voice. "But I'm sure that Selket has accused me. She hates me for being beautiful while she is ugly and old. The brothers are the same. Imsety is stupid, and Djaper hates me."
The concubine's rancor swelled as she related her tri als. "They will all tell you lies about me, but I'll tell you the truth. Djaper hates me because I spurned him when he would have lain with me and because my son displaced him in the heart of Hormin. I tell you they killed my master so that my son and I wouldn't take their place in his will."
"Enough."
Meren shoved himself out of his chair. He took Beltis's hand and helped her rise. As soon as she was up, he dropped her hand and went to the door. While he was opening it, he spoke again.
"While he was with you, did Hormin spill perfume on himself?"
Beltis furrowed her brow. "No, my lord."
Meren stepped out of the bedchamber. He looked back at Beltis, and saw that she had resumed her posture with her breasts pressed forward. Determination seemed to be a great part of her character. Meren surveyed the gleaming nipples, then let his eyes slowly drift to Beltis's face.
"You say the wife and sons of Hormin are guilty of this murder. Over and over you have complained that they hate you. If they hate you so, Beltis, tell me why it wasn't you who was found buried in natron with a blade stuck in your pretty neck?"