Lynda Robinson: Murder at the Feast of Rejoicing

"I thank you, Anhai, but-"

She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "While I am cursed with a man who not only can't keep his place at court but also hasn't the seed to give me even one child in the dozen years we've been married."

Meren felt his jaw come unhinged. He'd forgotten for a moment what Anhai was like-a ka filled with putrescence and surrounded by a fine layer of jeweled charm. He stared at her while she appeared to reflect upon her words with pleasure. Bentanta had the diplomacy to appear engrossed in an examination of the water lilies. He didn't return Anhai's smile, and stared as she left the garden with an air of having gained some great victory.

Isis, who was holding Remi's wet hand, also stared at Anhai's retreating back. "I don't like her. Come, Remi, you're going back to your nurse before you get my gown wet."

Meren regained his composure and glanced at Sennefer. His cousin was one of those men who make up for a lack of stature by cultivating an abundance of muscle. At the moment every one of those visible was flushed, as was his face. He had a short, sharp nose that reddened almost to the color of wine. He muttered something Meren didn't catch, then excused himself and rushed after his wife.

Meren was left alone, wet and uncomfortable, with Bentanta. She didn't seem to be in a hurry to leave, and he was slow to recover his composure. Bentanta was a childhood friend grown into a woman of grace. Once he'd swum naked in the Nile with her, Djet, and Ebana, but their lives had taken them along different paths. She was a widow with children the age of his own. Once she'd served the great queen Tiye, mother of Tutankhamun, and Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten and daughter of Ay. She was as well versed in court intrigue and imperial diplomacy as he, but of late she'd retired from service to Tutankhamun's queen, Ankhesenamun, to live quietly.

But whether a private person or a royal attendant, Bentanta was a formidable woman. And the last woman in Egypt before whom he wished to appear in nothing but a clinging, wet kilt.

He cleared his throat. "Blessings of Amun be upon you, lady. I didn't know you were coming to the feast of rejoicing."

Bentanta left off her examination of the water lilies and gave him a stare that seemed to slice through his body and probe his ka.

"There's no need for foolish courtesy, Meren. I know you weren't expecting me. Neither was your sister. I'm here because I was visiting Anhai, and she insisted that I come with her."

"You sound as if you don't want to be here."

Her lashes fluttered, and she gave him a smile as false as the gilt on a coffin lid. "Of course I want to be here. I came to see you."

Wary, he gave her a skeptical look. "Oh?"

"I've much leisure time now that I'm no longer at court, time to reflect on the happy memories of childhood. This reflection has given me a desire to renew old friendships, like ours." She turned her back on him and walked away. Glancing over her shoulder, she said, "You can stop looking like a trapped gazelle, Meren. I only mentioned friendship, not marriage. My view of husbands isn't much more cheerful than Anhai's."

She left him standing by the pool, dripping, his kilt clinging to his hips. He shoved damp hair from his forehead, looked down at himself, and cursed. This morning he hadn't bothered to don anything other than a kilt. He might as well have been wearing a loincloth.

Sputtering curses at his own lack of judgment, he stalked back into the house to his private apartments. Zar was already there, instructing bathing attendants. The man seemed to know what he would need before Meren did. A convenient and at the same time unsettling habit. Meren glared at the servant, went into the bathing chamber, and stepped into the limestone bathing stall. As a bathing attendant poured water over him, he wondered that his skin didn't steam from the irritation that boiled within him.

He consoled himself with the thought that he only had to survive the rest of this day and the evening's feast. Then everyone would be gone, those slugs Nebetta and Hepu, Great Aunt Cherit, the lecherous Sennefer, Anhai,

Bentanta, all of them. Then he'd have peace, and the freedom to do what he'd promised pharaoh he would do. And if Idut didn't get rid of his relatives, he was going to throw them out himself.

Lord Paser was a man of unique appearance; of this he was quite certain. He prided himself on his closely cropped hair and perfectly barbered goatee and mustache. He felt that his missing right canine tooth lent him an air of battle-hardened experience. No one had ever mentioned to him that his forehead shined as if he oiled it, or that when agitated, he flapped his arms like the wings of a pelican coming in for a water landing.

At the moment Paser was quite pleased with himself. Yesterday afternoon he'd given up following Count Meren, depressed that his strategy of spying on the Friend of the King had yielded nothing but boring days of watching the man sail that evil black ship of his. Meren hadn't, as Paser suspected, gone to some secret meeting of allies. He'd gone home, just as he'd said he would-and stayed there. Paser had watched for two days and then given up. After insisting to Prince Hunefer that Meren never simply went home to rest, Paser had been faced with the prospect of returning to court with nothing to report for his trouble.

He'd directed his ship toward the capital and was drifting slowly northward with the current when he passed a south-going flotilla of trading ships of Ra laden with cargo. He'd been lounging beneath the awning in front of the deckhouse in his favorite gilded cedar chair, his face lifted to the north breeze, when he happened to glance at one of the barges.

The two vessels passed within a few skiff-lengths of each other. As they did, a man walked around the giant mount of grain sacks stacked on the deck, and Paser jumped out of his chair. Hurrying to the railing, he shaded his eyes and peered more closely.

Kysen! Had his yacht been going faster, he might not have had time to make out that wide jaw, the rounded youthful chin shadowed with a man's stubble, and those half-moon eyes. But he'd gotten a good enough look, long enough to see the grave expression on the youth's face. Unguarded, not so well versed in masking emotions as his father, Kysen's expression revealed what Lord Meren's never did-misgiving, apprehension, uneasiness.

That look was enough to make Paser order his ship to come about once out of sight of the flotilla. Now he was trailing after the slow-moving fleet, biding his time, watching. As he plied his fly whisk in the shade of the canopy that stretched before the deckhouse, a hail signaled the arrival of a visitor. While the last ship in the trading fleet disappeared around one of the bends in the river, the visitor climbed from a skiff up a rope ladder on the side of the yacht.

The newcomer hoisted a leg over the railing, then the other, and stalked over to Paser. Retreating to his chair, Paser flapped his whisk, already annoyed without having spoken to his visitor. The intruder started talking before reaching the awning.

"What are you doing? I'm on my way to Count Meren's feast of rejoicing, and I see you skulking down the river."

Paser turned in his chair to scowl at his guest. "I said I was going to follow Meren to see what he was really up to."

"But you're not following him, you fool."

"Don't you call me a fool. I'm not the only one scram Wing for a place at court."

"And who told you to do your stalking in a yellow and-green yacht, of all things? Do you think Meren's blind?"

"There are many craft on the river-mine's no more noticeable than most."

The guest lunged at Paser, pulled him out of his chair, and hurried him to the railing. Pointing, the newcomer hissed into Paser's ear.