Lynda Robinson: Murder at the Feast of Rejoicing

He held out his arms. "Bener, my sweet."

To his consternation, she met his eyes, then glanced at Reia and Iry as if asking for their dismissal. Hoping his jaw hadn't fallen open, Meren waved the young men away. Once their backs were turned, Bener chuckled and floated into his arms.

Laying her head on his shoulder, she murmured, "I've missed you, Father, and I know you're angry at finding us here, but we had to warn you."

"It was my idea," Isis said as she tugged on his kilt.

Bener drifted out of his arms too soon, leaving him disturbed by her composure. She glanced down at her sister.

"I told you not to throw yourself at Father like a monkey. You're never dignified."

An argument erupted, but Meren was too busy studying his daughters to interfere. They had changed in the few months he'd left them in his sister's charge. Idut had warned him, but he hadn't taken her seriously. He should have. Bener was a woman now, tall and slender as a papyrus reed, but her arms and legs bore the elongated muscles of a leopard. Her face still held some of the plumpness of childhood, but she moved with the stateliness of a priestess and seemed to cultivate the demeanor of a woman three times her age. She reminded him of her great-grandmother.

And Isis. Isis frightened him, for she was beautiful, and he knew the dangers the world held for beautiful women. She had always been pretty, but she had matured into a double of her mother, who had always startled people by her resemblance to the fabulous Nefertiti. Once she left behind the immaturity of childhood, Isis would make men step on their tongues when she passed.

He was imagining trouble before it arose. He'd drive himself mad.

"Enough quarreling," he said quietly. His daughters immediately broke off their exchange, which aroused his suspicions. "How did you get here, and why are you here? No, Isis, let Bener speak."

Bener exchanged a quick, apprehensive glance with her sister, wet her lips, and began. "It's not our fault."

"What isn't your fault?"

Again that quick glance.

"Remember your letter to Aunt announcing that you were coming home?" Bener asked. "Urn, you see… That is, Aunt didn't pay attention to the part about how you wished your return to be private, just for us."

Isis burst in with an aggrieved tone. "I knew she'd ruin everything. We haven't seen you in months, and she's ruined everything."

"Father," Bener said, "Aunt has arranged a great feast of rejoicing in honor of your homecoming."

Meren leaned against the defensive wall at his back and scowled. "I made myself plain. I sent instructions."

"Aunt says she forgot," Bener said with a lift of her arched brows.

Isis kicked the wall with one sandaled foot. "My ass, she forgot."

"Isis!"

His youngest daughter lifted her delicate face to him, and he noted the way her fragile jaw set in place as if mortared there.

"She's ruined everything. How can we go sailing and fowling or even talk to you at all with all of them coming?"

Rubbing the back of his neck, Meren asked, "Who? Who has she invited?"

"Everyone," Isis said.

"Don't be a goose-wit," Bener replied. Isis ruined the elegance of her features by sticking out her tongue.

Meren fixed her with a stern glance. "Out with it."

Twirling a lock of hair around her fingers, Bener hesitated, then began a list that included Idut's son Imset, who was supposed to be studying in Memphis, Meren's cousin Sennefer and his wife Anhai, three of his uncles and their wives, and over a dozen of the local nobility. She didn't include the family retainers and supporters, tenants, and servants who would flock to this grand celebration.

"Oh, and I almost forgot, Great-Aunt Nebetta and Great-Uncle Hepu."

He kept his expression blank as she spoke the two names he least wanted to hear. Surprise made him vulnerable to the burn of old, festering hate. How could Idut have invited Nebetta and Hepu? She knew he never wanted to meet them this side of the netherworld. She knew what they'd done to their own son. His beloved cousin Djet was dead, and they had killed him as surely as if they had stuck a dagger in his heart.

No, don't think about it. Your anger will grow until it swallows you. This isn't the time. Old grief compounded new-the loss of his companion in war and in celebration, the bright, merry, traitorous Tanefer. Djet and Tanefer, both gone. He might forget Tanefer one day. He would never stop grieving for Djet. He used to tease Djet that they were each other's twin soul. They had learned to shoot the bow together, to hunt, to fish, to sail. He and Djet had shared those early discoveries of the body that every boy experiences. They had even spent the night in the haunted temple near Baht on a dare. Together they had braved that isolated valley, slept within the crumbling walls of the temple, and screamed when, in the blackest part of the night, the desert fiends howled down the valley on the wind.

"Father, is something wrong?" Bener asked.

He shook his head and smiled. "Naught is wrong, my little geese. Now tell me how you got to the mooring place of pharaoh."

"That was my idea too," Isis said. "Uncle Ra was going home, and I begged him to take us this far."

"Ah," Meren said faintly.

He turned his back and gazed out over the river. Fishing boats, skiffs, barges, and pleasure craft sailed with and against the current. One of the yachts that floated past with its elongated rectangular sail unfurled to catch the north breeze had been his brother's. Ra hadn't even stopped. The reason was obvious to Meren, who knew his brother well, so well that from childhood he'd called the younger boy Ra after the powerful sun god. Ra didn't want to be there for Meren's grand return. He didn't want to see crowds rushing to the dock to greet Meren, didn't want to hear the cheers, hear Meren's name called, see countless backs bent in homage. And Ra knew how much his absence would hurt his older brother.

Meren's thoughts veered away from that idea. He had a more immediate problem. His private homecoming had been transformed into a grand celebration. Privacy was necessary, and not just for him and his daughters; quiet and calm, a sedate, unremarkable visit, these were conditions upon which he'd counted. If the feast interfered too much with his plans, he would have to leave his country house far sooner than he wished.

He hoped Isis wasn't right. He hoped his sister hadn't ruined everything. If she had, Meren was the one who was going to pay.

Late that afternoon Meren left the deckhouse at Bener's call and joined his daughters at the bow of Wings of Horus. He'd been contemplating the prospect of doing anything in secret with a house full of curious relatives. The elders still thought of him as barely old enough to leave off the sidelock of youth. Just as worrying was the certainty that the house would turn into a teeming anthill in which he would find no place to carry on private conversations with his daughters.

The ship sliced through the water, angling toward the east bank, and he caught sight of Baht, the country home of his family for countless generations. It lay between the narrow strip of cultivated fields and the desert that forever threatened to invade. Baht, like the houses of most noblemen, was a continually growing collection of family dwellings, servant's quarters, granaries, stables, cattle pens, and outbuildings surrounded by whitewashed walls and refuse heaps.

From this distance all he could see were the carefully tended trees his ancestors had planted, and through them, blank walls and roofs. Within, in the main house, lay a paradise. At least, that was the way he imagined it. In truth, he'd spent little time there since his father had sent him, as a boy of eight, to court to become a Child of the Nursery, one of the favored few privileged to share the training of royal princes.