Bak continued to press, approaching the same subject from different directions, but Khereuf’s answers never var ied. The sergeant was convinced the merchant had had no political dealings, and Bak himself began to believe that the suggestion had been a figment of Captain Antef’s imagina tion.
He thought it time he ventured further afield. “Comman der Minnakht mentioned that Maruwa had a woman here in
Waset. Did he ever speak of her?”
“Irenena,” the sergeant said. “He went to her for many years. She was to him like a wife.”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“Oh, no, sir!” The sergeant looked shocked. “He would never have asked me to his home.”
Bak could well imagine how a woman might feel about the prospect of listening to endless talk of horses. “Did you never see him away from these stables?”
“We sometimes went together to houses of pleasure, yes.”
“What did you speak of there? Other than horses, I mean.”
Bak thought the sergeant a good, honest man, but his tacitur nity was driving him mad.
Khereuf seemed puzzled as to why Bak wished to know.
“We often played knucklebones or throwsticks and wagered on the games. We talked of hunting the wild beasts, or of wrestling or some other sport. Or of the women we saw around us, those who toiled in the houses of pleasure, whose bodies we took and then left behind.”
Soldier talk. The talk of men away from their families. No different than the thousands of conversations Bak had heard in houses of pleasure along the Belly of Stones. “Did he ever say where Irenena lives?”
Khereuf shrugged. “Somewhere near the foreign quarter,
I think. He spoke with pride of the house he had provided her. Three rooms, he said, and from the roof she can look down upon a well and a small grove of date palms.”
With that, Bak had to be satisfied. How many wells could there be in or near the foreign quarter?
“Lieutenant Bak!” Commander Minnakht stepped out of the walled yard that lay between the well and the building which held offices and storage magazines. “I trust Sergeant
Khereuf was helpful?”
“Yes, sir. He feels even more strongly than you that
Maruwa had no interest in politics. I’m beginning to believe the reason for his death lies elsewhere.”
“After we parted, I thought of something Maruwa once told me. The tale may have nothing to do with his death, but
I’d be remiss in not repeating it.”
“Sir!” A sergeant came through a solid wooden gate in a wall beyond the office building. “We’re getting ready to smoke out the rats. Do you want to see?”
Minnakht glanced at Bak and groaned. “I guess I’d better.
Come, Lieutenant. We can talk while the men get on with the task.”
Bak could understand Minnakht’s reluctance. As a chari otry officer, he also had been obliged to watch while the granaries were cleansed of vermin. A necessary task some men enjoyed, but he for one did not. They followed the ser geant into a walled area containing ten conical granaries.
Three men stood off to the side, each holding two large, thick-chested dogs by their collars. Another man carrying an unlighted torch stood at the top of a stairway on a long, nar row mudbrick platform that ran along the back of the grana ries, connecting them and providing a platform from which to fill the structures.
“All right,” the sergeant yelled, “let’s get started.”
“A miserable chore,” Minnakht said, “but we can’t allow the rats to multiply. In spite of all the precautions we take, they get into everything, leaving their filth behind and con suming far more than their share of grain.”
Bak watched the man at the top of the steps set the torch afire. Rather than bursting into flame, a cloud of thick, dark smoke rose in the air. “You have something to tell me, sir?”
The commander drew Bak off to the side, out of the way.
“Maruwa told me a tale some time ago. Three years, maybe more. A friend who toiled in the royal house at Hattusa, the stablemaster, wished him to relate the story to me so I could pass it on. According to him, someone in the household of the envoy from Kemet was interfering in the politics of
Hatti, fomenting trouble.”
Bak whistled. “A most dangerous endeavor if true.”
“So perilous I wasn’t sure I believed it. Nonetheless, I thought the possibility so grave that I passed the message on to Commander Maiherperi, who stands at the head of our royal guards.”
The man on the platform shoved the torch through an opening at the top of the granary, held it there, and spread a heavy cloth over the hole so no smoke could escape. The sergeant opened a small, square door at the bottom of the structure. Not much grain spilled out, which meant the gran ary was close to empty.
Bak thought over the tale and frowned. “Would not so se rious a matter have come through official channels?”
“I know what you’re thinking, and so did I. Maruwa, who’d had many more days than I to think it over, had con cluded that someone in authority in Hattusa wanted to pass the word on in an informal manner, hoping Maatkare Hat shepsut would act before the Hittite king was forced to. Af ter hearing him out, I was inclined to agree. For some time, our sovereign has looked upon the king of Hatti in friend ship. If the traitor had been caught in Hattusa, he would’ve lost his life, which would’ve strained that relationship.”
Bak nodded his understanding. Whispers in the back ground were often more effective than blustering on the surface.
A rat raced out of the granary, setting the dogs to barking.
Eight or ten other rats followed, adults and their half-grown young streaking off in all directions. The handlers released the dogs, who sped across the sand, growling, barking. The rats, frantic to escape, sought shelter, but the best they could find were the long shadows of evening. They had no chance.
Within moments they were dead and the handlers were racing around, catching the dogs before they could gobble their prizes and lose their ardor for the game.
“Did Maiherperi think the tale true?” Bak asked.
“He must’ve. He told me later that the envoy had been re called to the land of Kemet.”
“I’ll need that envoy’s name, sir.”
“I never knew it. You must ask elsewhere.”
Amonked would know or, if not, would be able to find out. “Was the identity of the traitor ever established?”
“Maiherperi never said.”
A connection between the incident in Hattusa and the slayings in the sacred precinct was even harder to imagine than tying those two murders to Maruwa’s death.
Chapter Nine
“I agree with Lieutenant Bak, sir.” Lieutenant Karoya stood as stiff as the long spear he held in his hand. “The priest
Meryamon was slain in exactly the same manner as the Hit tite merchant Maruwa.”
“You went to the house of death this morning?” Amonked asked.
“Late yesterday.”
A dozen or more priests hurried down the wide stone path joining the sacred precinct to the quay at the edge of the ar tificial lake that provided waterfront access to Ipet-isut.
Chattering like swallows, they walked around the raised limestone platform on which Amonked, Karoya, and Bak stood. Hastening down the shallow stairway, the priests boarded a small traveling ship that would carry them to wherever the day’s rituals required they go, probably Ipet resyt.
Amonked spoke no more until they were too far away to hear. “What of Woserhet?”
“It was difficult to tell, sir.”
“The priests who prepare the dead for eternity had already removed his internal organs and covered him with natron,”
Bak explained. “Between the fire, which had blackened and blistered his skin, and the salts that had entered the wound, its shape was lost to us, but I’ll not soon forget how it looked the day he died. Much the same as the other two.”