Lauren Haney: A Vile Justice

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.

Below, the river surged down the broad channel between the island of Abu and the east bank. Massive black boulders rose from the depths on both sides of the channel, mighty buttresses glistening in the sun, impervious to the continual assault of the water flowing between them. To men with a strong imagination, they resembled elephants, huge ungainly animals living far to the south, creatures that seemed more mythical than real to men who had never seen them. Creatures from which much of the ivory was taken that had given Abu its name.

The loud calls of men at work drew Bak's gaze downstream, where four fishing boats were pulling in the day's catch.. Silvery arcs flashed in the distance as fish leaped out of the water, trying to escape the closing net. Farther downstream, a small transport ship rode low in the water beneath a heavy cargo of reddish pottery jars, making slow progress against the current. Its patched red sail stood at an angle to the breeze, sacrificing speed to reach the trading village of Swenet on the opposite shore. A smaller, sleeker vessel, its sail full to bursting, swept past the transport and veered in a westerly direction toward the island and the more substantial degcity of Abu.

The sound of laughter drew his eyes to Djehuty's traveling ship, still moored at the landingplace below the villa. Kasaya had left the vessel, he saw, and was sitting on a projecting boulder a short distance downstream, chatting with several women kneeling on the mudbank, washing clothes. He had to smile. The young Medjay, tall, hard-muscled, and goodnatured, had a way with women few other men could claim. The older among them sought to mother him, the younger to gain a caress — if not more. Information flowed from their lips like water from an overturned bowl.