Year of the Hyenas (19 page)

Semerket
abruptly
raised his head from his notes to find Yunet and her nieces gazing at
him with limpid eyes. None of them any longer stitched at stars.
Quickly he rolled up his papyrus scroll, rising from the brick bench.

“We seldom see
men
from outside this village,” breathed Yunet. “It’s very… stimulating… to
us poor provincials.” Her nieces’ heads bobbed with enthusiasm.

“Do you
think,”
Semerket asked in a croaking voice, “…er… do you suppose that Hetephras
could have been the victim of some vengeful ghost, then? An unhappy
ancestor?”

One of the
nieces
spoke up hesitantly. “I hear,” she began softly, “that is, it’s been
said in the village…”

Semerket held
up a
hand to stop her. “Yes, I know—that a foreigner or a vagabond killed
her.” He nodded his thanks and hurried out of the house before they
could invite him to sample their beer.

In the alley
Hunro
waited for him. She had listened, and laughed to see him undone. “Are
you ready now to pay my price?” she whispered to him. “Do you see now
that you can learn nothing from these villagers—that I alone can help
you?”

He spoke more
harshly
than he intended. “I might have the soles of your feet beaten with
sticks if I thought you were really hiding something,” he said. “I have
only to command it.”

Her reply was
the
papery rasp of her jeering laughter.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK, Semerket found
himself outside the northern gate. He stepped into the sunlight, and
followed the path around the village walls to where the tombmakers’
tiny temple stood. He had no purpose for going there, other than to
flee the oppressive atmosphere of the village, for its smallness was
beginning to grate on him. That, and the fact that every one of his
interviews had yielded the same unshakable opinion that a foreigner or
vagabond had slain Hetephras. As he drew near the temple, he realized
that Sukis had joined him. Tail erect, she led him in the direction of
sounds that he realized came from a classroom in session.

Curious, he
followed
the children’s voices to the rear of the temple. In the open air the
village children sat cross-legged before a young priest, each clutching
a wax tablet and stylus. They were reciting from a text that Semerket
recognized—the story of the Snake King and the Lucky Peasant.

As he watched
the
students, he was glad to see the young priest was not overly fond of
using his stick on the children. Nevertheless, like any good teacher,
he followed the ancient maxim that a student “learns through his
backside,” and occasionally lightly whacked a child who flubbed the
lesson.

Hearing the
noise of
the priest’s reed cane slashing through the air brought Semerket
instantly back to his own school days, for he had often heard the same
sound. There had come a day, however, when the teacher had raised his
stick once too often and brought it across Semerket’s face, breaking
open his cheek. A few minutes later, the neighbors were drawn to the
schoolroom by the man’s plaintive cries, to find the thirteen-year-old
Semerket thrashing the man almost to death. It was the first time that
he had been called a follower of Set, and his formal education was
over. Soon thereafter Semerket became Metufer’s assistant in the House
of Purification.

“Did you want
something?” the young priest in the tombmakers’ school asked.

Semerket shook
his
head and hurried away. But at the temple gate he stopped again, hearing
the familiar voice of the scribe Neferhotep.

Semerket could
tell
from the scribe’s tone that his conversation was acrimonious, though
the persons he spoke to were well hidden behind the temple wall.
Treading slowly in the deep shadows, keeping to the taller tufts of
brown grass, Semerket approached a large boulder and hid behind it.
From there his view was unobstructed.

Astonishingly,
Neferhotep was speaking to a trio of beggars. Their leader was brown
and shaggy, and, as Semerket peered closer, he could see that the man
was shorn of his nose and ears—sure signs that he had once been
punished for some terrible offense. Even at a distance Semerket caught
the beggars’ sour, unwashed scent.

He kept to the
shadows. Straining to hear, only the sibilant sound of half a word came
to him: “…meses,” Neferhotep said. Creeping closer, hoping to hear
more, he was disappointed to find that the scribe and his unlikely
companions had reached a satisfactory end to their discussion. Smiles
were shared all around the motley group. At that point Neferhotep
brought out a large sack from a niche in the temple wall. Whatever its
contents, they were weighty, for the scribe staggered as he handed the
sack over to the beggars.

Noseless
peered
inside, staring raptly, and a slow smile spread across his toothless
maw. He nodded to Neferhotep and wrapped a cord tightly about the neck
of the sack. A final word of farewell and Neferhotep departed quickly
for the cliffs above the village. He was no more than a few feet away
from where Semerket hid, but the scribe stared only at the ground as he
passed and remained oblivious to Semerket’s presence.

The beggars
still
huddled together at the temple wall, talking in low voices. Once, years
before, Semerket had been a familiar figure in the murky world of the
Beggar King of Thebes, doing him a service in the course of an
investigation. In return he had been taught the secret signal that
gained him protection in the king’s realm.

The beggars
jumped
apart as he approached, and stood as a human wall in front of the sack.
Though Semerket made the secret sign to them with his fingers, their
eyes remained hard and wary and they gave no sign in return.

“A copper
piece, my
lord?” Noseless implored, thrusting out a monkeylike hand to grab at
Semerket’s cloak. “Amun’s blessings upon you for a bit of silver…?”

“Alms! Alms!”
cried
the other two beggars in unison.

Semerket
fished out a
copper from his belt and tossed it to Noseless. “I’ve not seen you here
before,” he said. “How did you get past the Medjays?”

“Do not beat
me, my
lord!” Noseless whined shrilly. “We’re only poor beggars looking for a
copper, a bit to eat.”

“What business
do you
have with the chief scribe?”

At this the
man’s face
became sly. “I might ask you, my lord, what business is it of yours?”

“I am the new
foreman
here—tell me at once.”

“Forgive me,
my lord,
but you’re not the foreman. You’re that one who labors for the vizier.
We’ve heard of you…”

The other two
beggars
began to circle behind him. Semerket pressed himself against the wall
of the temple to prevent being attacked from behind. In the fading rays
of the sun he saw knives suddenly glinting in the beggars’ brown hands.
They lunged at him then and he jumped to the side, hearing their blades
scrape against the temple wall where he had stood. They mumbled curses
beneath their breath at having missed him.

At a signal to
one
another they separated, one going to either side of him. Noseless,
Semerket noticed, remained steadfastly protecting the sack.

The other two
beggars
were advancing on him from the left and right, to force him away from
the wall and make his back vulnerable. He saw the beggar on his left
carefully aim his knife to throw it. Semerket was on the verge of
yelling for help when he saw a light streak of fur shoot past him. It
was Sukis. The beggars stared at her, briefly entranced at seeing a cat
so close by. Only nobles or temple acolytes possessed cats. In that
moment, Semerket made his move and fled.

He was lucky
to
encounter a horde of children rounding the corner of the temple. The
priest had dismissed his class for the day, and his students were
babbling in high childish voices to one another. They stopped abruptly,
mouths agape, seeing Semerket. As he sprinted into their midst, the
children shied from him, but the beggars did not dare follow.

At a sign from
Noseless the trio melted away into the shadows of the cliffs. The last
Semerket saw of them, they were headed down the northern trail that
would take them over the Gate of Heaven, and from there to the Nile.

Though most of
the
class had run away, a few children still lingered, staring at him.
“Tell me,” he said to a boy, “did you see Neferhotep just now?”

The boy’s
older sister
stepped forward to punch her brother’s shoulder. “Don’t tell him
anything!” she said. She was a stringy thing, with the same buckteeth
as her brother and the same precocious look. The boy hit her back, but
it was a ceremonial jab, nothing that would bring real pain. He
continued to stare at Semerket, more from curiosity than fear, his
obsidian eyes as black as those of the man he faced.

“A copper
piece says
you’ll tell me,” Semerket said, bringing out a piece of gleaming metal
from his belt.

“Tell him!”
said the
boy’s sister immediately.

“He’s in the
cemetery,” said the boy. Eagerly he took the copper from Semerket. As
he hurried away, Semerket heard the ensuing argument between the
siblings, the boy’s sister claiming half the prize.

Semerket trod
the
short, steep distance to the village cemetery and entered through its
bronze gates. He had every intention of confronting Neferhotep about
the beggars—who were not beggars at all, or else they would have known
the secret sign—but as he walked through the deserted streets of the
graveyard, there was no one to confront.

Each tomb
faced the
east, and in their courtyards were sycamores and flowering shrubs,
gardens made exclusively for the enjoyment of the dead. Statues of the
deceased inhabitants faced the sun from far niches at the ends of their
respective courtyards, while small pyramids of brick crowned the vaults
at the rear.

There was no
sign of
Neferhotep, and Semerket was beginning to doubt the schoolboy’s
veracity. But at that moment echoing voices came to him, carried on the
winds that blew from the north. Stifling a sense of foreboding,
Semerket followed the flow of words to a tomb near the center of the
necropolis.

He passed
through
miniature pylons and into the courtyard. An old acacia tree, stunted
from lack of water, grew in the center of the garden, while ivy crept
around its base like a spider’s web. Semerket gave a start when he saw
the statue within the family niche. Hetephras herself stared back at
him. The life-sized image had been freshly painted and the priestess
smiled benignly, clad in her blue wig of vulture wings and linen
sheath. To the side of the vault was another statue, that of Djutmose,
her long-dead husband.

Suddenly
Neferhotep’s
querulous voice echoed from a well in the center of the verandah.
Semerket crept forward to peer into the hole. A steep stairway within,
almost a ladder, led into a faraway crypt illuminated by distant
wavering torchlight. He recognized the second voice as Foreman Paneb’s.
Straining to hear, Semerket bent farther into the shaft to listen.

“When will you
make an
end of this?” Neferhotep was saying. “You’ve done no work in Pharaoh’s
tomb for weeks. Now I hear you’ve put the rest of the team to work in
Hetephras’s tomb.”

“We owe this
to her,
Nef. She shouldn’t have died.”

“Don’t preach
to me
what I have said to you all along.”

“Her tomb will
be the
finest in the cemetery. Maybe then, gods willing, she can forgive us.”

“Gods! I’m
sick of
gods. A man has to look out for himself—”

Neferhotep’s
voice
suddenly broke off in surprise. When he spoke next, the scribe’s voice
could barely contain his anger. “All the devils of Set! What are those?”

“What…?”

“Over
there—those
pillars!” There was a sharp gasp. “Sweet Osiris, they’re the ones from
Pharaoh’s tomb! You’ve stolen them—cut them out and brought them here!
I can’t believe it! Have you gone completely insane?”

“No one will
notice,
Nef.”

“One
investigation is
not enough for you, now you want another?” Semerket heard the sound of
pacing, and the light in the tomb wavered.

“Nef—”

Neferhotep’s
voice was
a nagging irritant. “Well, I won’t help you this time if you get in
trouble. You’ve really lost all reason. And for what? Because of some
simple-minded old woman—”

Paneb exploded
in
anguish. There was an aborted cry from Neferhotep and then sounds of
choking came up the well-shaft. From experience Semerket could well
imagine Paneb’s hands around Neferhotep’s throat, crushing the life out
of the scribe.

Semerket was
about to
climb down the shaft to intervene, much against his will, when he heard
Neferhotep abruptly sucking air into his lungs, gasping and coughing.

“Get out,
Nef.” Paneb
panted, and his voice was low and angry. “Don’t come down here again.”

Neferhotep was
sputtering. “You’ll be sorry! I won’t forget this!”

“I’m sorry for
everything. Sorry for believing you when I did.”

Neferhotep was
rapidly
climbing the well shaft. Semerket ran silently to hide behind the
statue of Hetephras before the scribe emerged into the dying light of
the courtyard, staggering. Neferhotep turned and screamed into the
direction of the well, “And stay away from my wife! I’ll bring you up
on charges of adultery, both of you— see if I don’t! I won’t lift a
finger when they stone you!”

The scribe
lurched
through the pylons and out of the necropolis. After a moment Semerket
crept from his hiding place to the well shaft. The noises of
construction resumed from within the tomb. Then, to Semerket’s
surprise, the sounds of sawing and hammering became mixed with Paneb’s
sobs.

THE WEEKS PASSEDand gray clouds gusted
over the desert, bringing to Egypt the scent of unaccustomed rain.
Within the cemetery the new chamber that Paneb had created in
Hetephras’s tomb was finished, its curved ceiling supported by the four
ornate columns purloined from Pharaoh’s tomb. Satisfied that a sturdy
tomb awaited his aunt’s body, Paneb walked slowly through the burial
chamber, holding a torch close to the walls to inspect every detail.