A Vile Justice (27 page)

"Lieutenant Dedi was meant to die, Amethu." Bak laid a sympathetic hand on the steward's wrist. "If you hadn't eased the slayer's path, he'd've found another way."

"So I've told myself."

Bak let the matter rest, aware that words alone could heal no open sore. If Amethu was the man he thought he was, time and a will to forget would soothe his conscience. "What can you tell me of Nebmose, the man who dwelt in the villa next to Djehuty's?"

"Nebmose?" Amethu released the pleats in his kilt and glanced up. "You are reaching far afield, aren't you?" Bak ignored the jibe. "I walked through the house and grounds this morning and was struck by their value. It occurred to me that Nebmose might've had some distant relative, one whose relationship is unknown to all who dwell in Abu, a man seething with resentment at having his birthright confiscated."

"No, no, no." Amethu shook his head vehemently. "Nebmose had no living relatives, close or distant. That I know for a fact."

"How can you be so sure? I've lain with women I've told no one about. Might not he or his father or his father's father have done the same, creating a child at the time?"

"You don't understand." The steward wiggled around on the bench to face Bak, the better to make sure he got his message across. "Nebmose was his father's only child, and his father was his father's only child, and so it had been for at least six generations. That was their curse. Somewhere in the distant past, the gods had willed that each man in that family would have only one child-one boy. No girls were ever born, no second sons."

Bak frowned, skeptical.

The steward read the look on his face and turned indignant. "I knew Nebmose's father well, Lieutenant. We studied together in the scribal school at the governor's villa. And my father knew his, studying with him a generation earlier."

"I can't believe none of Nebmose's ancestors had concubines."

"None who conceived, but..." Amethu hesitated, scowled. "I've heard tales ... Well, who knows how true they are? They're told in the servants' quarters and enter the homes of respectable men and women through the back door. They say that pretty servant girls in Nebmose's villa have, in past generations, given birth to babies born deformed, sad little creatures fortunate to die within an instant of seeing the light of day."

Bak found the tale difficult to believe, the curse superstitious nonsense. But the steward, he felt sure, was not a man to pass on information containing no grain of truth. If only my father were in Abu, Bak thought; as a physician, he would know if such a thing were possible.

A new thought struck. "You grew to manhood with Nebmose's father?"

Amethu nodded. "A good man, he was, one I valued as a friend. All who knew him loved and respected him. No malformed babies were born to his servants, I can tell you. His one and only son, Nebmose, was as fine a man as his sire."

Bak stood up and walked to the edge of-the shade, giving himself time to absorb the news. Throughout his stay in Abu, he had assumed Nebmose to be Djehuty's age. Never had he thought him a young man. Walking back to the bench, he asked, "How'old was Nebmose when he died?"

"He'd just celebrated his twentieth year." "How long ago?"

Amethu drew his head back, surprised. "Has no one told you? He was an officer in the garrison. A lieutenant. One of the many fine young men - who died in that frightful sandstorm five years ago. The storm in which you've shown so much interest."

"By the beard of Amon!" Bak was staggered. He had been looking at that house for eight long days, walking its grounds, taking it for granted. Could he, after so much time, have stumbled upon the right path at last? "Was anyoneanyone at all who toils in the governor's household-related in even the most remote fashion to Nebmose?"

"Simut." Amethu spoke as if he could hardly credit Bak's lack of knowledge. "He was Nebmose's uncle."

Bak eyed the steward warily. Simut's name was the last he had expected to hear, the relationship hard to believe. "Did you not just tell me Nebmose had no relatives?"

Amethu waved off the objection as if of no significance. "Simut was no blood relative and had no right to the property. His wife's sister was wed to Nebmose's father, and she died long before her husband. He didn't tell you? I'm astonished. He thought of the boy as one of his own."

Bak recalled the chief scribe mentioning a nephew lost in the storm, a youth as close to him as a son. Which might explain the offerings left in Nebmose's family shrine. But would it account for the unusual care given the interior of the house and the garden in which the shrine stood? Bak's thoughts leaped back to the possibility that had occurred to him earlier-a notion he had rejected without due consideration. If that idea had any merit at, all, and now he was inclined to think it might, the donor was another individual altogether.

For one thing, Simut could not be the slayer. He had been at the farthest end of the province at the time of Lieutenant Dedi's death, accompanying the tax inspector.

Simut lived in Abu, in a housing block a short walk from the governor's villa. His home was similar to dozens of others Bak had seen in the crowded cities of Kemet, revealing nothing of his lofty position in the province. It was a modest single-story dwelling of five rooms laid out in a square, with an open kitchen at the back that contained a hearth, an oven, and a small conical granary.

The chief scribe spoke with Bak in the reception room, which was larger than the other chambers and whose high roof was supported on a single wooden column painted red. Windows close to the ceiling allowed light to enter and air to circulate. The household gods Bes and Taurt stood in niches along one wall, while a small ancestor bust occupied a third niche.

Simut's short kilt and lack of jewelry testified to his intent to spend the day in the comfort of his own home. "Now that that wretched inventory is complete, I thought to escape for a few hours the cares of my daily task," he explained.

His wife, short and round like her husband and as cheerful as a sparrow, hurried in with open jars of beer and a basket of sweetcakes that smelled of yeast, with bits of dates and raisins peeking through a crusty brown surface. She placed the food and drink on a low woven reed chest between the stools on which the men sat, brought out drinking bowls, and hustled away.

Simut, plucking a cake from the basket, examined his guest's bandages and bruises with an open and curious mien. "From what I hear,' Lieutenant, you put on quite a show last night. The tale's already reached near-mythical proportions."

"The men of Swenet and Abu are easily amused." Bak made no attempt to hide his irritation. "I caught my man in spite of them, but I couldn't keep him alive."

"My wife just returned from the market." The scribe handed a drinking bowl to his guest and ajar of beer. "She heard Nenu was the one who took all those. lives in the governor's household and he was attempting last night, not for the first time, to slay you. Frankly, I find it difficult to credit him with so many vile deeds. He seemed a lackadaisical sort, one without enough purpose to plan so elaborate a scheme."

"He was a tool, nothing more, one used by the governor to..."

Simut gave him a startled look. "You're accusing Djehuty

of murder? Surely he's not responsible for all those deaths!" "Only for Nenu's attempts to slay me."

"Oh, come now, Lieutenant. Why would he want dead the one man who..." Simut noticed the look of conviction on Bak's face and his voice tailed off. He shook his head, utterly mystified

Pouring beer into his drinking bowl, Bak admitted, "To be quite honest, I don't know. I suspect he wanted to prevent me from learning the secret he's refused all along to divulge."

"A secret born in that fatal sandstorm five years ago." "So I believe."

"I wish I could help you, but I know almost nothing of that tempest." Simut took a bite of cake, swallowed it, added, "What little I do know I've told you."

"Have you?" Bak's voice carried an edge of cynicism. Simut frowned. "What are you implying, Lieutenant?" Bak set bowl and jar on the table, stood up, and strode to the door. Abruptly he swung around. "You told me of a nephew who died in the storm, a young man you loved as a son. Yet you neglected to mention that he was Nebmose, the man who owned the villa Djehuty claimed for the royal house and took as his own."

"I thought..." The scribe blinked, taken aback by Bak's accusing stance and tone. "Well, I ... I guess I just assumed you knew."

"You told me you once resented Djehuty for returning alive, but you no longer harbor the feeling. What of Nebmose's villa? That lovely house and outbuildings now sitting idle except for an infrequent lodger. And the farmland north of this city. An estate most men would covet."

Simut gave him a pained look. "I'm satisfied with my lot, Lieutenant."

Bak walked to the niche holding the ancestor bust. A bowl for burning incense stood before the image. Someone had dropped a broken needle into the small mound of cold ashes, indicating a lack of reverence he could not imagine in the individual tending Nebmose's shrine. "Forgive my poor

manners, Simut. My time is running out and I'm floundering.

The scribe acknowledged the apology with a stiff smile. "If Nebmose had lived, he'd've wed and had a son of his own. As it was, he left no one, nor did he ever document his wishes with respect to his property. Djehuty has no more right to it than I, but at least now it'll go to mistress Khawet and not a stranger."

Bak tore his eyes from the small, red-painted figure and stared at Simut, barely daring to breathe. The scribe's unmistakable belief that Khawet was entitled to Nebmose's property came close to verifying the suspicion that had been growing in his thoughts all morning. An idea he. had gone out of his way to deny but must now face.

Like the young man who had lived in the adjoining villa, Khawet would have been about twenty years of age when the sandstorm occurred. Close in age, thrown together by proximity, similar in their noble heritage, they most likely would have developed a strong bond. A marriage would have been logical, a merging of the two estates.

Though certain he now knew the answer, Bak asked, "Who's leaving offerings in Nebmose's family shrine?" "She is. Khawet."

"And she's caring for the house and garden?"

"She's always kept close watch on the servants who toil there, yes."

Releasing a long pent-up breath, Bak dropped onto his stool. "The lord Amon preserve-me for being so dense!" Simut blinked, not understanding.

"I knew she wed Ineni at the age of twenty," Bak explained, "much later in life than most, but I-assumed Djehuty held her close. I should've realized by the way she treats her husband that he was second best, that another man took pride of place in her heart. Ineni himself told me so, but I let his words pass over my head as a cloud does." His eyes leaped toward Simut. "Were she and Nebmose wed when he died?"

"The marriage contract had yet to be witnessed and sealed." .

"Why wait so long past marriageable age when they dwelt so close together?" Bak could not keep the growing excitement out of his voice.

Simut, sensing the younger man's agitation, answered with alacrity. "As Nebmose approached manhood, his father sent him to the royal house in Waset to rub shoulders with his equals. Khawet now and again accompanied her father to the capital, and there she and the young man consummated their love. Or so I believe. He entered the service of an envoy to faroff Naharin, and she vowed to await his return. I, for one, thanked the lord Amon when he came back with no other wife, but he was as true to her as she was to him.

"Negotiations had been concluded and the marriage contract prepared when Nebmose's father died. They waited to wed until the period of mounting had passed. Before they could do so, Djehuty summoned his troops, and they marched off to Uahtrest to punish the desert tribesmen. Nebmose never returned, and Khawet wed Ineni instead."

"At Djehuty's insistence," Bak said in a grim voice. "Ineni knew of her love for Nebmose and wanted to wait. Djehuty issued an ultimatum."

The two men stared at each other, the scribe with a dawning awareness, Bak with growing conviction. Many of the answers he had sought for so long fell into place, even Djehuty's attempts to slay him. The governor had a secret, probably one he was hiding from Khawet, and he had feared Bak would reveal it. Perhaps he had contributed more directly to Nebmose's death than mere negligence as a commander. Khawet had learned that secret--or had a good idea what it was-probably from Hatnofer. She had decided to seek revenge. Djehuty, though a master of self-delusion, had at some point coma, to suspect his daughter of wishing him dead.

No wonder he was ill. No wonder...

"By the beard of Amon!" Bak shot to his feet. "She's with her father now! Giving him herbal broth to soothe his stomach!"

"This is only the ninth day!" Simut was clutching at air and he knew it. "She wouldn't spoil her pattern now! Would she?"

Bak leaped toward the door. "Go summon a physician. Quickly!"

Racing up the stairs to the second story of the governor's villa, Bak spotted Amonhotep seated, head bowed, hands locked between his knees, on a stool in Djehuty's private reception room. The aide, his face drawn and pinched with worry, looked a perfect picture of dejection and exhaustion. "Where's mistress Khawet?" Bak demanded.