Lauren Haney: Flesh of the God

“Is that all?” Tetynefer prompted.

“Yes.” It came out like the croak of a frog. “Yes,” he repeated, his voice stronger, more firm.

Tetynefer stared at the scroll on his lap, then looked up, his chubby face as grave as any judge’s. “It’s clear mistress Azzia took her husband’s life.”

“She could be telling the truth. The room was accessible to many men.”

“Come now, Officer Bak! Nakht was a tested warrior, a man who saw action many times on the field of battle. While with the army of the king of Hatti, he stood out as one among many, an officer of great valor. Would a man like that allow another to thrust a dagger into his breast without defending himself? Certainly not! On the other hand, a wife could come close and distract him with words of seduction.” Tetynefer nodded, grunted his satisfaction. “Yes. That’s what happened. I’m absolutely sure.”

I wonder, Bak thought, if you’d be equally certain if you talked to her. “She seemed sincerely distressed by the commandant’s death.”

Tetynefer affected the woebegone look of the disappointed schoolmaster. “You’re young, Bak, and naive. You know nothing about women.”

Bak managed to keep his face blank, hiding his resentment at being treated like a child and his amazement that this fat old loaf of a man should consider himself so worldly.

“Mistress Azzia is a stranger in Kemet,” Tetynefer went on. “She has no family, no one to turn to now that she has no husband. If you were she, if you’d just slain the man who provided for you-and provided quite well, as you most certainly noticed-wouldn’t you be sincerely distressed?”

Bak conceded the point, but not aloud. He refused to give the steward the satisfaction.

Tetynefer dabbed the pen in the ink and poised it above the scroll. “I’ll tell the viceroy you’ll take her to Ma’am on the next northbound military transport. It should arrive in Buhen today and will sail away in…what? Three days. Yes, that should satisfy him that we’re conducting ourselves efficiently.”

Three days! Bak’s stomach knotted. To protect himself, he had to tell Tetynefer about the gold before he set foot on that ship. Would the one who stole it screw up the courage to approach him in so short a time?

Taking care to hide his dismay, he said, “Before I left Waset, Commander Maiherperi advised me to search for the truth until I find it. In this case, I’m not sure I have. Therefore, I need more time to prove the woman’s guilt or innocence.”

The steward raised a disdainful eyebrow. “How do you expect to do that?”

“I’ll ask questions until I’m satisfied one way or the other.”

Tetynefer snorted. “You clearly have no experience in delving into the mysteries of the human heart. If you had, you’d have seen Azzia’s distress for what it is: the will to live in the best and most comfortable manner possible.”

Bak gritted his teeth so no words would escape. He dared not offend this man. When the time came to speak aloud of the gold, he wanted the steward to accept his reasons for keeping it, not close his ears to the truth out of spite.

Tetynefer placed pen to papyrus and scratched out a dozen more lines. When he finished, he gave Bak a complacent smile. “I pointed no finger at Azzia; however, I’m sure the viceroy will guess from the contents of this message that it was she who slew her husband.”

He blotted the ink, rolled the papyrus tight, and secured it with a cord. After placing a small chunk of moist clay on the knot and pressing his seal into it, he handed it to Bak. “A courier is waiting at the quay. Tell him to take this to Ma’am immediately and to wait for the viceroy’s response.”

Three days, Bak thought, only three days. What could he accomplish in so short a time? He hesitated, sorely tempted to report the gold. No, he decided, not yet. He had to look at other possibilities, at other potential suspects. Where should he start? With Mery, he decided, and Nebwa and Paser, the three officers who were on the battlements near the time of Nakht’s death. At the very least, one of them might have seen something suspicious.

Bak leaned against the open portal between the lane and the small walled courtyard fronting the unmarried officer’s quarters, a dwelling of at least a half-dozen rooms. A mudbrick bench ran along the facade of the house and several wispy tamarisks grew along the wall to his left. The night’s chill remained in the shaded court. Besides the caravan officer Paser, who was seated on the bench, the sole other occupant up and about was a reed-thin servant, a boy no more than ten years old. He squatted beside a low-rimmed pottery bowl resting on a bed of coals in a square brick hearth. The scent of onions and fish rising from the bowl made Bak’s stomach ache for breakfast.

“How can you doubt Azzia took her husband’s life?” Paser asked. “Have you reason to believe someone else was there?”

“No,” Bak admitted, “but I hesitate to accuse her until I’m certain.”

“Nakht was a true warrior, a man I admired above all others,” Paser’s voice hardened, “but he should never have wed a foreign woman.”

Bak eyed the square-bodied lieutenant, a man in his late twenties with skin burned as dark as leather from many hours in the sun. His build, his sharp features, and a cool self-confidence bordering on arrogance testified to the fact that he was first cousin to Senenmut, chief steward of the lord Amon and Maatkare Hatshepsut’s favorite. Her advisor and, if the rumors were true, her lover. Nakht had called Paser the boldest of the several officers who led the caravans back and forth between Buhen and the mines.

“I understand he lived in Hatti when they met,” Bak said, “where he was the foreigner.”

Paser’s laugh was hard, cynical. “He was younger then.”

“Are you saying he regretted the match?”

“All the world knows he couldn’t bear to be away from her,” Paser said scornfully. “Maybe he feared he’d lose her, maybe he could no longer please her in the privacy of his bedchamber.”

Bak thought of his own father, a few years older than Nakht, who every night shared his sleeping pallet with either his matronly housekeeper or a pretty young servant girl. He knew, though, that some men lost their virility earlier than others.

“Do you believe she had a lover?” he asked.

Paser stood up and walked to the fire. “I came upon them by chance a day or two ago. They were quarreling.” He knelt beside the boy, speared a fish with a pointed stick, and laid it on a small, flat loaf of bread. “Nakht made no outright accusations, but from the veiled words he used I had no doubt of his mistrust. And now…” He chuckled, insinuating the worst. “Well, she’s free, isn’t she?”

“Who’s free?” Nebwa emerged from the dwelling, yawning broadly as he tried with awkward fingers to fasten his kilt. He was tall and muscular, about thirty years of age, more tanned than Paser. His hair was untidy, his coarse features puffy, as if he had just left his sleeping pallet. He was the senior lieutenant in Buhen, in charge of the garrison infantry. His men patrolled the desert and skirmished with tribesmen bent on raiding villages and farms along the sector of river for which Buhen was responsible.

“Azzia,” Paser said shortly. “Nakht’s widow.”

Nebwa muttered a curse, glanced through the door behind him, and issued a sharp command in a tongue Bak could not understand. A slender dark-skinned woman in her late teens hurried outside to straighten his twisted belt. She wore a multicolored skirt dyed in a chevron pattern; other than a dozen or so bronze chains bearing a multitude of colorful stone amulets, her upper body was bare. She had come, Bak guessed, from one of the nearby villages.