Lynda Robinson: Murder at the Feast of Rejoicing

"Ha! Meren, you jackal, I haven't seen you in months and months."

Sennefer clapped him on the back. Meren suppressed another sigh and tried not to sound too morose. "Greetings, Sennefer."

"Give me beer, cousin. It's a hot sail and a dusty drive from my place to yours."

"You can go back."

Laughing, Sennefer hit him on the back again. "And miss one of Idut's feasts? Besides, the daughter of the mayor of Abydos has become importunate. Why do they always try to suffocate you, Meren? They demand that you spend time with them, suck you dry, and then want more."

"Someday you're going to get a dagger in your heart for interfering with married women, Sennefer."

"It's not my fault," Sennefer said as they reached the reception hall. He broke off to smile at a serving maid who offered a bowl of water for his refreshment. "What do you expect? There are so many, and they want me, they beg. I can see it in their eyes."

Meren waved the serving maid away, and when she was gone, Sennefer continued.

"You see. That one was ready to jump behind the nearest bush with me."

"She didn't even look at you, Sennefer."

Shaking his head, Sennefer led the way into the central hall and collapsed on a couch with his beer. "You always were jealous."

"Oh, certainly."

He didn't care what Sennefer thought. Sennefer had always been an impoverished version of his younger brother Djet. Sennefer bragged of his exploits; Djet kept quiet and drew into thrall countless admirers of both sexes. Sennefer boasted incessantly of his courage in battle when it was known he never participated in anything more dangerous than a skirmish with unarmed thieves; Djet had received the gold of bravery from pharaoh. Meren stopped listening when Sennefer began to lecture him on how to seduce his serving maid. Then his guest said something that caught his attention.

"Did you say your wife wants a divorce?"

Sennefer waved a hand. "She says she wants children. I can't help it if she's barren. And she thinks she's going to get my estates in the Hare nome. What an imagination, eh?"

"You can't make her stay if she wants to leave."

"She won't leave without the riches she wants, believe me. Anhai's first love is wealth. I swear, Meren, she's counted every piece of food, every pot, every grain of barley and wheat we ever produced since the day we married. If there was gain in it, she'd market the sands of the desert and the dung in the cattle pens."

"You shouldn't criticize your wife to me," Meren said. He was going to kill Idut. He was trying to think of an excuse to leave before Sennefer could recall more misery to impart when Isis burst into the hall, obviously aggrieved.

"Father, Remi says he's going to jump into the garden pool."

Meren looked at her in surprise. His household did not come to him with the small misbehaviors of a three-year-old grandson. "Where is the nurse?"

"Aunt Idut sent her to help in the kitchen because of the feast tonight, and I'm watching him."

Waving his daughter away, Meren said, "Then simply tell Remi not to jump in the pool."

"I have, but he said he's going to do it anyway, to retrieve his toy chariot. You know he'll do it, Father."

"By the gods, Isis, if he does, haul him out."

His charioteers would have recognized the irritation in his voice and decamped. Not his daughter. She smoothed the pleats of her spotless robe and tossed a thick lock of hair from her wig over her shoulder.

"I can't," she said. "I would ruin my costume."

Meren narrowed his eyes and studied Isis. Why hadn't he noticed that she was arrayed in elaborate dress? There were more pleats in her robe than feathers on a duck. Her eyes were painted with kohl and green paint, her arms and shoulders laden with electrum and carnelian. He should have noticed, but he thought of Isis as a babe. Yet dressed as she was, she looked older than Bener.

Frowning, he glanced at Sennefer, who had been snickering during the exchange. He intercepted a predatory stare at his daughter. Jolted into awareness, he stood up so that his body blocked Sennefer's view. His cousin smoothly drew his gaze back to Meren, only to falter at the image of death he found there.

Lowering his voice so that only Sennefer could hear him, he said, "Attempt it, and I'll cut your cock off and make you eat it." Sennefer gave him a look of outraged innocence that was ruined by the way he swallowed hard as though nauseated. Turning to Isis, he said, "Come, I'll attend to Remi. If you don't intend to take care of him, don't say you will. Find a maid to do it."

As he followed Isis, with Sennefer in tow, he passed servants busy cleaning the chambers and hall in preparation for the feast. The garden lay in a walled enclosure behind the house. Its pool was deeper than the reflection pools in front and large enough to support one or two pleasure craft of the type designed to hold several people. In contrast to the barren fields and desert, the garden at Baht was lush with carefully tended greenery.

Generations of his family had cultivated willows, sycamores, pomegranates, and fig trees here. Incense trees graced painted earthenware pots. Arbors of grapevines provided secluded alcoves in which to rest. Flowers bordered the pool in thick beds. Meren scanned the court for the small figure of his grandson and found him bending precariously over the edge of the pool.

Raising his voice, he called, "Remi, stay back."

Like Meren's pet hounds and his thoroughbreds, Remi only heard what he wanted to hear. Meren's second call was drowned by the splash Remi made as he dove into the water. Cursing, Meren raced across the garden, leaped over a flower bed, and dove in after the boy. The exertion caused the newly healed skin over his shoulder wound to pull. He'd jumped in an area thick with water lilies that could bind him underwater.

Fish slithered against his body as he sliced through the water. Shadows from the water lilies obscured his vision. Searching the dappled haze, he spotted the gleam of bronze and a little hand reaching for it. Meren darted for the bottom, snatched Remi and the toy chariot, and thrust himself up and out of the water. Bursting into the open, he winced as the child's weight stressed his shoulder. Remi sputtered, then laughed and grabbed the toy. Swimming one-handed, Meren reached the side of the pool and handed Remi to Isis.

His hair was plastered to his forehead and hung down over his eyes. Gripping the edge of the pool, he hoisted himself out of the water and stood dripping beside Sennefer and Isis. All at once he noticed there were more people in the garden than he'd realized. Nebetta and Hepu huddled beside a grape arbor and gave him disapproving looks. No doubt they were scandalized at his departure from the demeanor of a great lord. Hepu probably had written a whole Instruction on the subject. He glared back at them, and they scurried out of the garden, muttering to themselves.

Then he heard a soft laugh. Lungs heaving, blinking back the water that dripped from his hair to his eyes, he turned to behold two elegantly dressed women standing beside a flower bed. One was Sennefer's wife, Anhai. The other was Bentanta, one of the few people alive who could make him blush. Anhai was chuckling at him. Thank the gods, Bentanta wasn't smiling at all.

"What are you doing, Meren?" Anhai asked. "I thought you were one of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh, not a nurse."

"I was-"

He stopped in midsentence as Anhai suddenly laughed, stepped toward him, and patted his cheek. She had a laugh like the chimes of a sistrum, one that evoked good humor in everyone. Meren forgot his embarrassment as she smiled at him.

"You're an amazement," she said. "You're one of the few who can call himself Friend of the King, you're entrusted with pharaoh's secrets, well-being, and defense, you're quite pleasing to look at, and you love your family."