A Vile Justice (4 page)

"How long ago was the youth Nakht slain?" Bak asked, pausing before the arbor.

Djehuty glanced at Amonhotep, passing on the question. "I remember thinking when I arose this morning that Montu was slain a month ago today, exactly thirty days. As for the boy. . ." The aide stared at the pool, trying to recall. "Yes, he died ten days before the guard did, a week to the day." A sudden thought brought his head around and he gave Bak an odd look. "They both were slain on the final day of the week, and so was Senmut, ten days after Montu's demise."

Bak stood quite still. "Today is the final day of this week."

"You don't think ... T' Amonhotep stared, appalled. He had been absent from Abu for eighteen days, almost two weeks.

Bak swung toward the governor. "Did anyone die on the grounds of this villa ten days ago?"

Djehuty autontatically shook his head, then his face drained of color and he moaned. "It was an accident. It had to be. No man or woman was near the animal."

"What are you saying?" Amonhotep looked ready to shake his superior. "Did someone meet a violent end while I was gone?"

"Lieutenant Dedi." Djehuty's shoulders slumped, and he spoke barely above a whisper. "It happened in the stable here in the compound. He was found in a stall, trampled to death by a horse gone mad."

"What exactly happened?" Bak demanded, his voice so harsh he frightened an approaching duck and her brood, sending them fluttering toward the nearest ditch. "Horses don't go mad without cause. And men don't walk into a stall containing an animal whose spirit is troubled." As a former charioteer, Bak could speak with authority.

"This horse went mad, I tell you." Djehuty rubbed his face as if to wipe away the problem. "Maybe the creature ate tainted food. Maybe a mouse or rat frightened him. Maybe he took a dislike to Lieutenant Dedi's smell." He shook his head, unable to come up with a satisfactory reason. "Maybe the signs of madness were there all along and Dedi failed to see them. He was young and green, new to horses."

"I doubt his death was an accident," Bak said. "It fits too neatly into the pattern."

"Pattern!" Djehuty sneered. "Coincidence, more likely." Bak felt like strangling him. Each time Djehuty had to face a new horror, he retreated farther from the truth. "You must see, sir, that if Lieutenant Dedi was slain exactly ten days ago, and the sergeant ten days before him, and the spearman ten days earlier, and the servant.. ." A new realization struck and his voice faltered. "By the beard of Amon!"

"What is it?" Amonhotep asked. "What's wrong?"

"A second pattern." Bak saw the perplexity on both men's faces and hastened to explain. "Think of the rank of each man who was slain. First a lowly servant, next a common guard, third a sergeant, and . . ."

"And finally a lieutenant." Amonhotep's eyes slewed toward the governor. "Each man more lofty than the next." "No." Djehuty buried his face in his hands. "It's impossible! Another coincidence!"

Amonhotep's eyes met Bak's and he shook his head in dismay. "I've known men to slay in the heat of anger or to take an enemy's life on the field of battle. But this? I fear I don't understand."

"Nor do L" The question the aide had posed was important, Bak knew, but he had a more immediate problem. "Today is the tenth day of the week. If the pattern holds, someone will die today, someone of a rank higher than Lieutenant and not necessarily a soldier."

Amonhotep's voice grew weary. "You speak of all those men closest to the governor, all who toil solely at his behest. The loftiest men in the province."

"They must be warned." Bak glanced skyward. The sun, a burning yellow ball in a vivid blue sky, had risen to within an hour of midday. He prayed they were not already too late.

Djehuty's armchair stood empty on the dais in the audience hall. Filing into the room one after another were the men he had summoned at Bak's request. These were the highest officials on the governor's staff, men he depended upon for the smooth running of the province, his personal estate, and the small garrison situated on the island of Abu. Four men were standing before the dais, talking among themselves, speculating as to the purpose of the summons. Amonhotep, who stood with Bak just outside a door near the dais, had identified them as they entered: Troop Captain Antef, the chief steward Amethu, the chief scribe Simut, and Djehuty's son Ineni.

"I thank the lord Khnum they've all come," Amonhotep said. "I feared one among them would be unable to appear." Khnum was the god who guarded the sources of the river, the inundation. He was the principal god of Abu.

Bak noted the way the young officer skirted around the mention of death. He had surely realized his own situation. Or had he? "Have you thought, Amonhotep, that you're Djehuty's right hand, as essential to the smooth running of this province as any of the four we see before us?"

Amonhotep gave Bak a tight smile. "I'm not my master, Bak. I'm fully aware that I must count myself among those who might next face death."

Djehuty rushed out of a back room, swooped past the two officers without a word, and hurried to the dais. He sat on the mound of pillows padding his chair, his body stiff, his face pale and tight, and spoke with a forced composure. His staff formed a ragged line in front of him, silent, curious.

"You know as well as I of the unfortunate deaths we've suffered here in my household," the governor said. "And you know the vizier suggested 1 summon an officer from the fortress of Buhen, a Lieutenant Bak." He paused to clear his throat, hurried on. "He's come, we've spoken at length, and he's reached a conclusion I hesitate to endorse."

Bak muttered an oath. The governor had vowed to support him with no reservations. Now here he was, retreating from a positive stance.

"I'll let the lieutenant speak for himself," Djehuty added, "so each of you may judge the worth of his words." Stifling his irritation, Bak stepped through the door to stand beside the dais. After a few introductory words to identify himself, he briefly discussed the four deaths and went on to the conclusions he had reached. "I believe ... No! I'm convinced an attempt will be made before the day ends to slay one man among you."

"Bah!" This from a short, portly man with a fringe of curly white hair. Simut, the chief scribe. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant, but I'm a busy man. I can't run away and hide simply because you've arranged the facts to fit a theory you've created in haste. A week from now, two weeks-after you've come to know this place and its people-you might have sufficient knowledge to come up with a convincing argument. But now? Too soon. Much too soon."

Could he be right? Bak wondered. Could my past successes have made me overconfident? Hiding self-doubt in a humorless smile, he said, "Sir, if I were to walk on tiptoe and clutch caution to my breast, as you suggest, I doubt your governor will be among the living beyond a week from today.

Djehuty sucked in his breath like a man struck in the stomach. Bak was hard put to sympathize. If the governor had not yet admitted to himself that his name probably lay at the top of the slayer's list, he had no one to blame but himself. "I know of no man who would wish to slay my father." The speaker was tall like his sire, but harder muscled and lacking in angularity. His hair was short, dark, and glistening with good health, his skin burnished by the sun. He was close to Bak's twenty-five years.

"You must be Ineni," Bak said. "Lieutenant Amonhotep told me you oversee your father's estate."

"Where the lieutenant is my father's right hand," Ineni said, bowing his head in mock acknowledgment, "you must think of me as his left hand."

Bak commended the quip with a fleeting smile. "You don't take seriously the possibility of another murder, this one closer to you and yours?"

"Three of the dead out of four were soldiers. Would that not make Troop Captain Antef the next most likely man to die?"

"I may be wrong, but..." Simut snorted at the admission.

". . . but I believe the youth Nakht was slain not only because of his lowly status, but to pass on the message that a civilian is as likely to die as a soldier."

"What kind of swine would slay a child?" The speaker, Antef, was a large, heavy man in his early thirties. He wore the short white kilt of a soldier and the belt and sheathed dagger of an officer. "And for no better reason than to deliver a message."

"You think I err?" Bak asked.

"I pray you do." Antef's mouth tightened. "If you've read the signs right, the one you seek is no ordinary man. He does what-he wants, giving no thought to the laws of men or the wishes of the gods."

"Few men walk the earth so fearless." Djehuty's chief steward, Amethu, was a man of middle years. He had the broad shoulders and narrow hips of youth, but his stomach bulged and he was as bald as a melon. He wore the anklelength kilt of a scribe and a bronze chain around his neck,

from which hung a dozen or more small colored stone amulets of the ram-headed god Khnum.

Antef gave the steward a scornful look. "Some men don't share your awe of the gods, Amethu. They hold themselves Above all creatures, mortal and immortal alike."

"Should I feel shame because I revere the gods?" Amethu asked, raising his chin high. "It certainly wouldn't hurt you to bend your knee before a shrine or in the forecourt of a god's mansion."

"I served my turn less than a month ago as web priest in the mansion of . . ."

"Enough!" Bak raised his hands for silence and spoke to them all as one. "You each have duties, I know. They can't be laid aside because I believe the slayer intends next to slay one of you. Go on with what you must do, but stay always in the company of other men. Don't ever walk alone. Don't. . ."

"Sir!" A young woman, a servant if her rough linen sheath told true, burst through the rear door. Her roundish face was whiter than her dress, her eyes wide open, horrified. "Oh, Governor Djehuty!" she wailed. "It's terrible! Oh, sir!"

Bak leaped toward the young woman, confused by her words, by her demeanor, very much aware of the men before him, all alive and well. Could another individual have been murdered? One that did not fit the patterns he had so carefully developed?

Amonhotep, a step ahead, caught her by the shoulders. "What is it, Nefer? What's happened?"

Tears flowed as if from a river and she began to tremble. "Oh, sir! Oh!".

"Speak up, woman!" Amonhotep shook her none too gently. "Tell us what's happened."

"It's mistress Hatnofer," the girl sobbed. "She's dead. Her head smashed. So much blood! Oh, so much blood!" Hatnofer? Bak thought. Djehuty's housekeeper? He spat out an oath, and another and another. From what little the governor had said about the woman earlier in the day, she

had been as important to him as were the five men standing before the dais. Yet he, Bak, had failed to think of her, to summon her, and now she lay dead. If her life had been taken while he stood here warning the others, he would blame himself through eternity.

Djehuty sat as if turned to stone by the gods, his face pasty white, his hands clutching the arms of his chair.

"No!" Someone-Ineni, Bak thought-breathed the denial.

` The portly chief scribe Simut stared at the servant, blinking like a man unable to comprehend. Troop Captain Antef muttered a curse, calling the lord Khnum for strength, and groped for the handle of his dagger as if seeking its protection. The chief steward Amethu's lips began to move, but no words came out-a prayer of some kind, most likely.

"I must see her," Bak said, his voice sharp above the girl's sobs.

Amonhotep, still grasping her shoulders, shook his head as if waking from a dream-or a nightmare. "Where is she, Nefer? You must take us to her."

"I can't look at her again!" Sobbing, shaking her head, she tried to back away, to free herself. "Oh, sir, please don't ask it of me!"

Bak laid a hand on her arm. His touch was gentle, his demeanor kind, yet he felt her cringe. "We ask only that you show us where you found her, Nefer. Nothing more."

She gave him the look a drowning man would give one who had thrown out a lifesaving rope, but the tears continued to pour, the sobs to break the flow of words. "We went into the master's quarters in Nebmose's villa. We thought to prepare the rooms for you, sir. That's where we came upon her. Mistress Khawet and I."

"Nebmose's villa?" Bak threw Amonhotep a puzzled glance. "She wasn't slain within this compound, as the others were?"

"Our walls surround both houses." The aide kept his eyes on Nefer, spoke to her, calming her with facts she surely knew well. "This has long been the governor's villa, occupied by Djehuty's family for many generations, since a longdead ancestor was made governor of the south by Kheperkare Senwosret. The other house and its outbuildings belonged to a family as old as Djehuty's, probably descended from the same ancestor. When the last of the line, Nebmose, lost his life and no man or woman remained to inherit, Djehuty took the property in the name of our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut, and made it a part of his own. The rooms once occupied by the master of the house we now use to shelter visiting dignitaries, the remainder for storage."

Normally, property that reverted to the royal house was handed over to a god's mansion to be used for income or was given to a private individual as a reward for services. Had Djehuty simply taken the villa as his due? Or had he performed some worthy act?

"Hatnofer lies where we found her," Nefer sobbed, "in the master's bath. I dared not touch her, but mistress Khawet knelt by her side and sought the pulse of life in her neck." "Mistress Khawet?" Bak asked.

"My daughter," Djehuty croaked.

"My wife," Ineni said at the same time. His eyes flitted toward Djehuty and he added in a caustic voice, "She serves as mistress of this household for her father."

Bak gave him a sharp look, but Ineni's expression gave nothing away. Any message he had meant to convey had been for Djehuty's benefit, not for an outsider, a police officer.

Bak turned to the servant, smiled. "We must go, Nefer." He waited for her nod, then glanced at Amonhotep. "I'll need you, too, Lieutenant."

"Of course." Amonhotep released the young woman's shoulders and stepped back, but not so far that he could not stop her should she attempt to flee.

"What of the rest of us, Lieutenant?" Simut demanded. "The wretched woman was a housekeeper, important to this household but of no appreciable worth to the affairs of the province. On the surface, her death appears to verify your theory, but does it?"

Was the scribe always so irascible? Bak wondered. Or was he using irritability to shield himself from grief-or fear? Simut undoubtedly knew the power a housekeeper could wield, as did he. Bak's father, a physician highly regarded for his skills, had been unable to save his mother, who had died in childbirth. He had grown from a babe to manhood in the care of a woman who had ruled the servants with an iron hand - and himself and his father with the tact and skill of a royal envoy.

"In a large establishment such as this, the mistress of the house ofttimes serves as a hostess, leaving the housekeeper to oversee the servants and see that no task is forgotten and all are done well. Was that true here?"

"It was." Amethu, who had ceased his prayer, stepped forward. "But now and again, when Hatnofer complained of drowning in a flood of duties, mistress Khawet eased her path by helping."

"I have a feeling," Bak said, turning again to Simut, "that the slayer wishes to damage Djehuty, not the province. In that respect, Hatnofer stood among you as an equal and you no longer have to fear for your lives."

"And if you err?" Simut shot back.

Taking care not to show how annoyed he was, praying a second death would not occur before the sun dropped below the western horizon, Bak's eyes traveled along the row of men. "Go on about your business, all of you. But go with care, extreme care, surrounding yourselves at all times with other men, giving the slayer no chance to draw near."

* * *

They hurried out of the audience hall, Amonhotep in the lead, Nefer whimpering a step or two behind, and Bak close on her heels. They strode through a series of chambers, all comfortably furnished with low wooden tables, stools, and chests. Rush mats covered the floors and floral paintings decorated many walls. In the larger rooms, flowers of every color imaginable were massed in pottery jars, perfuming the air. Deeper in the dwelling, a series of corridors took them past smaller, plainer chambers containing sleeping pallets and storage chests.

Leaving the building through a rear door, they hastened across a bare patch of sand, passing a row of four tall, conical granaries built alongside the house. A gate through a waisthigh wall took them into another sandy yard, which fronted the long, low building housing the kitchen and servants' quarters. The yeasty scent of fresh bread vied with the aroma of roasting meat, reminding Bak of the midday meal he had missed. The tangy odor of manure drifted from a building hidden behind a wall; the whinny of a horse identified its occupants.

Within another, smaller enclosed yard, he saw the well, a wide-mouthed round hole surrounded by a low wall, with a flight of steps leading downward. Beyond a higher wall, date palms whispered in the breeze and birds fluttered among the leaves of a sycamore: the garden he had seen earlier in the day.

As they passed through yet another gate, this in a wall much too tall to see over, Nefer's feet began to drag, telling Bak they had entered the grounds of the neighboring villa. The passage had been opened between the two propertieswhether at Djehuty's command or sometime in the past he had no way of knowing-to provide a shorter path between the two dwellings, eliminating the need to walk around to the formal entrance at the front. The house, he saw, was about half the size of Djehuty's but palatial compared to most of the dwellings in a provincial city such as Abu.

After passing four granaries and an empty stable, they stepped through a door Nefer had left open in her haste to

get help. Beyond three small rooms filled with sealed storage jars, they entered a hall whose high ceiling was supported by two papyrus-shaped columns. The room was bright and cheerful, a place designed to please visitors of lofty rank. The musty smell of an empty dwelling underlay the odor of fresh paint.

Another door led to a spacious room furnished with wooden chests, stools, and even a chair. Thick rush mats covered the floor. The walls were white, with a simple lily motif running around the room near the ceiling. This had once been the private reception room in the master's suite. The quarters were far too grand for Bak's purpose and taste, far too sumptuous for himself and his Medjays, and with the governor's villa so close, far less private than he liked. A problem Hatnofer's death had solved for him.

A slender woman with hair curling around her shoulders sat in the chair, staring at nothing. An untidy pile of sheets lay on the floor nearby, bedding she or Nefer must have dropped, now forgotten. In her early to mid-twenties, she had the same prominent cheekbones and jaw as Djehuty, the same long and slim body, but the whole softened by femininity. No man would call her beautiful, nor could she be called plain.

When Amonhotep and Bak stepped into the room, she started as if awakened from a nap. "You've come at last." She rose to her feet and walked toward them, her eyes on the newcomer. "You must be the officer from Buhen."

"Lieutenant Bak," he said, nodding. "And you're mistress Khawet?"

"You couldn't have come at a more opportune time." She formed a smile, but her voice trembled, - making a lie of the attempt at humor. "I'm sorry. I fear I'm not myself."

Bak took a quick look around the room. Two open doors revealed small chambers containing folded sleeping pallets, a few stools, and woven reed chests. A third led to a far more spacious chamber containing a bed made up with fresh linen, wooden chests, and several stools standing on a carpet of woven reed mats.

He stood in the doorway, eyeing an opening in the wall at the far end. "You found mistress Hatnofer in the bath, Nefer said."

She gave the open portal a haunted look, nodded. Bak could see she was as horrified by what she had found as was the servant.

Not sure he wanted to share the experience but knowing he must, he strode across the bedchamber and slipped through the opening. Passing the toilet, a pottery seat on a mudbrick box of sand, he stepped through a second opening, offset from the first to form an alcove. Inside, a woman lay sprawled across the floor and atop a limestone slab with a slight depression to contain water. Forty or so years of age, she was small and wiry, her -skin pale, her hair coarse and unnaturally black. Disheveled tendrils had burst from a baglike linen headdress, torn partway off when she fell-or when she was struck. Her features were sharp, like those of a bird and even in death looked cunning.

The shallow stone basin had been built into a corner whose walls were lined with two other slabs to protect the mudbrick walls. One slab was heavily splotched with blood, the second barely dotted. The woman's head, the right temple smashed and bloody, lay close beside a slim, elongated pottery jar, broken at the base, set through the wall to drain water to the outside. While still she breathed judging by the massive wound, not long, he thought-a thin stream of blood had trickled into the jar. The odor of a heavy, sweet-scented perfume hung in the air, as if her body had already been prepared for eternity.

"May the lord Osiris take her unto himself," Amonhotep murmured. He stood beside Bak, staring at the great, ugly wound, his face Bale, appalled.

Swallowing to rid himself of the sour taste rising in his throat, Bak knelt beside the body to feel for the pulse of life. None, nor had he expected to find one. No man or woman could have survived such a ghastly wound. Her wrist was cool to the touch, as was her bare shoulder. She had lost her life some hours ago-not long after dawn, he suspected long before he had called together the members of Djehuty's staff. Though unseemly, he offered a quick prayer of thanks to the lord Amon that she had not died because he had failed to consider her as a victim.

He stood up and glanced around. Linen towels lay neatly folded on a mudbrick shelf built into the wall. Three alabaster perfume jars and a dark blue faience container for eye paint sat beside a bowl of natron for cleansing the skin. Four large pottery jars, all filled with tepid water, stood in a row below the shelf. She had come, he had no doubt, to prepare these rooms for use. After making up the bed, she had entered the bath, a small and enclosed space well suited for attacking and slaying a slightly built woman like her.

Bak saw no object that might have been used to bludgeon her, nor did he see any sign that she had fought to protect herself. She had known her assailant and held no fear in her heart just as the previous victims had allowed their slayer to come close.

When he turned away, prepared to leave, he found Amonhotep outside the door by the toilet.

The aide looked unwell, uneasy. "I can't help seeing myself in her place, my head crushed, the breath of life tom from my body for no good reason."

Bak laid a hand on his back and gave him a gentle push toward the bedchamber. "The slayer could as easily have chosen Antef. Or Ineni or Amethu or Simut."

Amonhotep seemed not to have heard. "I know I shouldn't be glad she's dead..." He gave Bak a grim smile. 11... and I'm not, but ... but I feel..." He shook his head, unable to air what lay in his heart.

Relief, Bak thought, relief that Hatnofer is lying lifeless on the floor while he remains alive and well. And who can blame him?

"It's my fault! My fault alone!" Khawet stared out across the river, rubbing her arms as if chilled. "If I'd only gone earlier, as I said I would!"

"You've no need to blame yourself." Bak had suggested Amonhotep report to Djehuty, more to escape the aide's unwarranted guilt than because he thought the need pressing, and now here he was, listening to another who wished to shoulder the blame for Hatnofer's death. "The slayer would've struck somewhere else if not in the guest quarters."

"She raised me from a babe! She was a mother to me!" Bak walked to the edge of the high natural terrace that followed the course of the river, a strip of land covered with patchy grass and wild shrubs ablaze with blossoms. A sandy path bisected the terrace, beginning at the stairway that rose from the landingplace, passing a deep, well-like water gauge, where the yearly flood was measured, and farther along, a large public well, and ending near the pylon gate of the mansion of the lord Khnum. Willow trees shaded those who walked the path or came for water or to speak with the god. A stately sycamore towered over the water gauge and an ancient grapevine clung to the wall around the deep structure. A monkey chattered in the tree, too shy to allow itself to be seen.