Year of the Hyenas (28 page)

In enthralled
wonder
he picked up a jeweled heart scarab, holding it high to read its
inscription by the feeble starlight. The name of Pharaoh Hatshepsut
leapt out at him from the scarab’s golden belly. Hurriedly he picked
out other pieces. Cartouches of Thutmose, Amenhoteb, Nefertari flashed
at him in rapid succession. But the most damning of all was the name of
Queen Twos-re inscribed on a magnificent cuff of gold inset with
cabochon rubies, the largest piece Hunro possessed. Semerket had beheld
its like once before—the cuff exactly matched the ear loop he and Qar
had found beneath the campfire ashes in the Great Place.

“Hunro—!” he
gasped.

“I’ll get a
good price
for them, won’t I, Semerket? They’re good quality, aren’t they?”

“Where did you
get
these?”

She refused to
meet
his eyes. “I told you—from the men on the tomb’s work gang, mainly. I
make them give me the jewels for… for what I do for them. You’re not
going to be jealous, are you? I’ve always been honest with you about
it. But after tomorrow, I’ll never—”

“This one—who
gave it
to you?” He held up Queen Twos-re’s ruby-studded bracelet.

“Paneb.”

“And this?”

“The lapis
ring? It
was from Aaphat, I think.”

“And this?” he
asked,
holding up a pectoral of gold and carnelian shaped like the snake
goddess Meretseger.

“Sani gave it
to me…
Semerket, why are you looking at me like that?”

He shook his
head,
trying to find the words. “Hunro, do you know where these come from?”

“Yes, of
course. The
men purchase them with their wages. They come from a merchant.
Amen-meses, I think his name is.”

“Have you seen
this
man yourself?” His voice was so sharp that she backed away from him,
confused and frightened.

She shook her
head.

“Has anyone
here in
the village seen him—anyone other than Paneb and his men?”

“I don’t
know…” Her
voice was faint. “Semerket, are you saying that my jewels aren’t worth
anything? That I can’t sell them?”

He shook his
head
sadly. “I’m saying that if you even tried to sell any of them, you’d be
arrested. I doubt you’d even go to trial before they’d tie a noose
around your neck.”

Her eyes grew
wide.
“Semerket, I don’t like your jokes.”

“These are
royal
jewels, Hunro—they
came from
royal
tombs. There is no
merchant. Amen-meses was a king, a man who stole the throne of Egypt
for himself years ago. The name is probably a code word for where they
got the jewels. Maybe they came from his tomb, I don’t know. But they
didn’t purchase them from any merchant, that much I know. These jewels
are stolen.”

Her mouth
opened, but
she could only stare at him. Then she seized the jewels and began
stuffing them back into the alabaster box.

“I don’t
care,” she
muttered. “They’re mine now. You’re mistaken.” Her hands shook so that
she could barely grasp the jewels in her fingers. The lapis ring went
flying across the tiles.

He retrieved
it for
her, and gently placed it in her palm. Her hand was icy, and she stared
off into the dark as if into an abyss.

“Hunro…” he
began.
“Nothing’s changed. You can still go live in Thebes. Come with me to
the vizier tomorrow, and tell him how you obtained the jewels—”

Alarm blazed
in her
eye. “No.”

“He’ll reward
you.
You’ll have a pension, a house, whatever you wish. Hunro, listen to me!
Once the authorities get involved, it will be over.”

She was
shaking her
head, shame and desperation in her glance. “Semerket, if I tell the
authorities, everyone in Thebes will know how I—” Her feather-light
voice broke from stress. He leaned forward to comfort her but she
recoiled from him, pressing herself against the wall, clutching the
alabaster jewel box. “They’ll know how I got them.”

Semerket
suddenly
understood the extent of Hunro’s misery. She had been the butt of so
many cruel village jokes for so long, she had come to believe them
herself. Even her lover Paneb told lewd stories about her. The village
men had traded her among themselves, plying her with bits of stolen
jewelry. She had behaved like a wanton because she saw it as the only
way to leave behind a life she abhorred. Just as Semerket had been
condemned as a follower of Set since he was a boy, never permitted to
be anything else but what the name implied, so had Hunro been condemned
for a role that others had thrust upon her.

“Suppose I do
tell the
authorities,” she whispered. “What will become of those men who gave me
the jewels?”

His sober gaze
confirmed what she suspected.

“Semerket,
I’ve known
these men almost all of my life!”

“I cannot
alter their
guilt and neither can you,” he said. No matter how gently he might put
it, in the end it came down to one thing: “Hunro, if you don’t want to
die with them, you must do what I tell you.”

Her lips were
trembling. “I can’t… I can’t destroy everyone I’ve ever known.”

“They’ve
destroyed
themselves.”

She was
shaking, and a
light sheen of sweat had broken out on her forehead. She abruptly bent
and vomited onto the tiles. When she had finished retching, he helped
her to the bench. Her breathing came slower, then, and she leaned her
head against the brick wall, silent.

“What are you
going to
do, Hunro? What are you thinking?”

“Thinking?”
She rose
to her feet then, as if every joint in her body ached, and turned to
him wearily. “That I wish I’d never met you.”

SNEFERU WAS SEATEDat his potter’s wheel.
The light in his workshop’s doorway darkened and he glanced up to find
Semerket and Qar standing there.

“Gentlemen,”
he said,
his voice uncertain. “What can I do for you so early in the morning?”

“Have you
managed to
repair Hetephras’s jar as you promised?”

He nodded.
“Well, some
of it, as well as I could. Some of the pieces were missing. I had to
use raw clay to fill the holes. I hope that’s all right.”

“Bring it to
me,”
Semerket said.

Once again
Sneferu’s
heart jumped in his chest, both from Semerket’s sober expression and
from the unfriendly tone in his voice. He darted a worried look at the
pair, then disappeared into the recesses of the workshop.

Semerket and
Qar
exchanged glances but remained silent. Semerket had gone to the
Medjay’s tower at dawn to tell him of all that he had learned in
Eastern Thebes, and of the clay pieces he had found in the Great Place
so long before, the ones that he had taken to Sneferu to reassemble.
Finally, Semerket had described to the Medjay every jewel that Hunro
possessed.

“They’re
robbing the
very tombs they built,” Qar remarked in wonder. “Yet it makes sense it
would be the tombmakers. Who else knows the Great Place so well?”

Qar and
Semerket had
agreed that they would force Sneferu to divulge the name of the jar’s
true owner—who was surely one of the tomb robbers. Later, they would
confiscate Hunro’s jewels. It would seem a terrible betrayal to her, of
course, but Semerket would ensure she received the credit for exposing
the conspiracy. At least it would save her life.

Sneferu
reentered the
workshop carrying the jar. “I’m surprised you found this jar in
Hetephras’s house, Semerket,” the potter remarked timidly.

“Why?”

“It’s not
hers.”

Semerket
exchanged a
quick glance with Qar. “Really? That’s a relief—I’d hate to have
Hetephras longing for it in her present mood. Whose is it then?”

Sneferu
hesitated,
frightened by the way Qar and Semerket were studying him—like owls
watching a vole, he thought. He felt a tremor of fear run up and down
his spine. “I—I made it for Sani.”

“The
goldsmith?
Khepura’s husband?”

Sneferu
nodded,
looking at the pot doubtfully. “Perhaps Khepura loaned it to her before
she was—”

They were
abruptly
interrupted by rising screams at the village gate. One voice rose
hysterically above the others.

“It’s Hunro!”
Semerket
said to Qar.

Qar thrust the
jar
into Semerket’s hands and left the workshop. He pushed through the
teeming crowds to the square with Semerket fast behind him. Hunro was
indeed screaming and sobbing. She fell to her knees when she saw
Semerket, hammering the ground with her fists.

“They’re gone.
All of
them gone,” she said. Tears streaked her face and her hair was a wild,
haunted thicket. Hunro clung to him, gasping. “The jewels—they’ve been
taken, Semerket.”

Semerket went
numb. If
the jewels were gone, so was the evidence he and Qar had planned to use
against the tombmakers. Only the pitiful, cracked jar in his hands
remained—hardly enough to convict anyone. He turned to Qar, who was
gazing about the square in anger, as if he could pick the thief from
among the gathering crowd.

The boy Rami
emerged
from the throng, followed by Hunro’s husband, Neferhotep. When he saw
that his mother was at the center of the mêlée, Rami ran
to her.

“Mother, come
away.
People are looking at you. Don’t do this.” He attempted to pull her to
her feet, but she was helplessly limp in his grasp, continuing to cry
and moan. “Mother, please,” he said again, glancing around at the
curious tombmakers. “You’re embarrassing me.”

Neferhotep
slunk
through the crowd. “Get up, you whore,” he said to Hunro between
clenched teeth. “You’ll not shame our family any further.”

Hunro blinked,
startled by his harsh words, but it was at that unfortunate moment that
she saw Khepura push her way through the crowd, accompanied by Paneb.
The head woman stopped in front of her, smiling with thin contempt.
Khepura leaned past Paneb to whisper something into Neferhotep’s ear,
and everyone heard her tiny cackle of joy.

Hunro shook
herself
loose from her son and screamed at the head woman. “Thief! Robber! Give
me back my jewels! I know it was you who took them!”

“I didn’t
steal your
whore’s rubbish!” Khepura protested, eyes wide. “By Amun, I will lay
myself in my tomb if I am lying!”

“I know you
did!”

The crowd
itself broke
the stalemate. “Let our good god decide,” they shouted. “Bring out the
oracle!”

The
tombmakers
erupted in cheers, all but the elders. Neferhotep was speaking in
fierce low whispers to Hunro, commanding her to drop her accusations.
Rami pleaded with his mother to please,
please
take back her
words.
Paneb, too, urged Hunro to calm herself.

“What are they
talking
about?” Semerket turned to Qar, whispering.

“They’re
speaking of
the statue of Amenhoteb—the pharaoh who founded this village over three
hundred years ago. He is the judge they use for such disputes.”

“A statue?”

Qar only
nodded, eyes
fixed on the villagers. They shouted that Qar must choose the god’s
bearers, according to their ancient custom. The Medjay quickly pointed
to various men in the crowd, six in total. Rami stood apart, trembling
and red-faced.

The men chosen
by Qar
sped inside the sanctuary, returning within moments bearing a god’s
sedan chair on their shoulders. Seated within it was the limestone
figure of the first Pharaoh Amenhoteb. Wearing his striped nemes crown,
hastily rouged and anointed, the graven pharaoh stared sternly at his
village.

The men
brought the
statue to where Hunro stood. For a moment she hung her head. But when
Qar abruptly pushed her forward, she caught her voice. “Act, my lord,”
she implored the statue, “to restore my loss.”

For a moment
nothing
happened. Then the six bearers began to sway on their feet and their
eyes fluttered. The men on the chair’s right unexpectedly dipped in
unison, as if they intended to pitch the statue onto the ground. The
crowd gasped, striving to keep themselves from the god’s gaze. The
chair righted itself, only to pitch forward when the two lead bearers
fell to their knees. Cries from the tombmakers rose again. But the
lead men leapt once more to their feet, turning the chair around, to
run headlong in the opposite direction. The villagers fell away before
them, yelling.

“What’s going
on? Tell
me!” Semerket demanded.

Qar leaned
back to
whisper in his ear, “The god is pressing down upon the shoulders of the
bearers, to indicate which direction they should take him.”

The bearers
seemed to
be confused. Round and round they turned, so that Amenhoteb’s oracle
could gaze his fill at all his villagers. Then the bearers stopped,
their feet suddenly rooted to the ground. For a long while they did not
move. Then they turned in Khepura’s direction, rushing headlong at the
head woman.

Qar prodded
Semerket.
“Now,” he whispered.

The statue
teetered
forward, so that its inlaid obsidian eyes could glare down upon her.
Khepura flung her arms over her head and opened her mouth to scream.
But at that precise moment the statue was shifted slightly to stare at
another beside her. The bearers sank to their knees then, and made no
other move.

The good god
had found
the thief.

Hunro put a
fist in
her mouth to stifle her scream—and the other villagers backed away from
the accused, leaving him alone at the circle’s center. Semerket seized
Qar’s arm.

It was Rami.

The youth fell
to the
ground. Hunro ran to him and held his face in her hands. “Did you do
it, truly?”

Reluctantly
the boy
nodded.

“I drop the
charges,”
Hunro cried instantly.

Qar stepped
forward,
saying the god had made his judgment and that the charges remained in
effect. “But,” he said, “if Rami produces the stolen items, we will
forgo his punishment. If not, the stick shall be brought and his father
shall beat him according to the law.”