Bak took the light and stepped into the room. He tried not to breathe, but the stench of blood, fire, body waste, burned oil, and charred flesh caught in his throat. As accustomed as he was to death, he felt ill. Swallowing bile, hardening his heart, he walked deeper inside. Careful not to disturb any thing on the floor, he knelt beside the dead man. Amonked entered the room, gasped.
The body was that of a sharp-faced man of about thirty five years, small and wiry. The fire, which had burned many of the scrolls lying around him, had consumed one side of his kilt and had darkened and blistered the right side of his body. A blackened oil lamp, a possible source of the fire, lay broken at his feet. His throat had been cut, the gaping wound dark and ugly. The pool of blood around his head and shoul ders had been diluted by water, making it difficult to tell ex 32
Lauren Haney actly how much the man had lost, but quite a lot. Bak guessed he had been lifeless when the fire started. He prayed such had been the case.
“Do you know him?” he asked Amonked.
“Woserhet.” Amonked cleared his throat, swallowed. “He was a ranking scribe, but was to serve throughout the Opet festival as a priest. He’d been given the responsibility for this year’s reversion of offerings.”
The daily ceremony was one in which food offerings were distributed as extra rations to personnel who toiled in the god’s mansion and to others who petitioned for a share. Why would a man who held such an important but transitory and innocuous task be slain?
“I’d guess the slayer stood behind him, reached around him knife in hand, and slashed his throat with a single deep and firm stroke.” With an absentminded smile, Bak accepted a jar of beer from the boy who had brought them from the barque sanctuary over an hour earlier. “He was slain in much the same way as the Hittite merchant we found dead last week.”
The boy, wide-eyed with curiosity and thrilled at being al lowed to help, handed a jar to Amonked and another to
Meryamon. Taking the remaining jar for himself, he plopped down on the hard-packed earthen floor of the portico that shaded three sides of the open courtyard. After the dead man had been carried off to the house of death, he had brought them to this peaceful haven in one of several buildings that housed the offices of the priests and scribes responsible for the storehouses.
“You believe Maruwa and Woserhet were slain by the same man?” Frowning his disbelief, Amonked pushed a low stool into the shade and dropped onto it. “What would they have in common?”
“Both men’s lives were taken in a similar manner, that’s all I’m saying.” Bak gave the Storekeeper of Amon a fleeting smile. “To tie the two together would be stretching credibil ity. Unless there was a link between them that we know nothing about.”
“One man was burned and the other wasn’t,” Amonked pointed out. “Would not that suggest two different slayers?”
“Probably.” Bak rested a shoulder against a wooden col umn carved to resemble a tied bundle of papyri. “What task do you have, Meryamon, that delayed you in leaving the sa cred precinct?”
The young priest sat on the ground near Amonked. His eyes darted frequently toward the portal and the men hurry ing along the lane outside on their way to the gate, eager to watch the procession. Whether intentional or not, his desire to follow was apparent. “I distribute to the officiating priests items used in the sacred rituals: censers, lustration vessels, aromatic oils and incense, and whatever else they need.”
Pride blossomed on his face. “I perform the task throughout the Beautiful Feast of Opet, yes, but also for the regular daily rituals and the various other festivals.”
“A position of responsibility,” Amonked said.
Meryamon flashed a smile. “I daily thank the lord Thoth that I was diligent in my studies and learned to read and write with ease and at a young age.” Thoth was the patron god of scribes.
The leaves rustled in the tall sycamore tree in the center of the court, and Bak spotted a small gray monkey swinging through the upper branches. “So you’re not a man who serves the lord Amon periodically. You earn your bread within the sacred precinct.”
“Yes, sir. And I dwell here as well. I share quarters with several other priests who, like me, have yet to take a spouse.”
Bak glanced at Amonked, thinking to defer to him, but the
Storekeeper of Amon urged him to continue with a nod of the head. “Tell me of the men who helped put out the fire.
Why did they remain behind?”
“Most were passersby, heading out to watch the pro 34
Lauren Haney cession. The three guards, I assume, were ordered to stay, to keep an eye on the gates and patrol this sector of the sacred precinct.” Meryamon smiled ruefully. “Bad luck for them, having to stay while their mates were given leave to play.”
Bak felt as if he were fishing in a muddy backwater, pok ing his harpoon at random in a place he couldn’t see. “The room where Woserhet was found. What was its purpose?”
“It’s a records storage room, sir, a place where we keep scrolls on which are recorded activities conducted in that particular block of storage magazines. Each object is tracked from delivery to disposal. Like other men with similar tasks,
I make a note of each and every object I remove and return, and many of my own transactions are stored there.” A shadow passed across the priest’s face. “Or were.”
“The room received a moderate amount of damage, but a considerable number of scrolls lay on the floor. Do you have any idea how many records might’ve been lost?”
“I noticed a number of empty spaces-fifteen or twenty,
I’d guess-on the shelves along the walls and quite a few broken storage pots on the floor. So many jars would’ve con tained a significant number of scrolls, but the vast majority, I thank the lord Amon, were saved.”
Amonked broke his silence. “How well did you know
Woserhet, Meryamon?”
“Not at all, sir. I’ve seen him now and again and I knew his name, but I didn’t know he was responsible for the rever sion of offerings.”
Amonked looked skeptical. “Are you not the man who’ll supply ritual implements and incense to that ceremony?”
“Yes, sir,” Meryamon said, looking uncomfortable, “but I must deal with Ptahmes, the chief priest’s aide, not the man who performs the ritual. I had no need to know who he was.”
“There goes a singularly uninquisitive man,” Amonked said later as they watched the priest hurry away.
Bak and Amonked strolled into the lovely limestone court in front of the imposing pylon gate that rose before the man sion of the lord Amon. The last of the procession had moved on, leaving the enclosure empty and quiet. The banners flut tered lazily atop the tall flagpoles clamped to the front of the pylon. Birds twittered in a clump of trees outside the court, and a yellow kitten chased a leaf blown over the wall by the breeze. A faint floral aroma rose from a slick of oil someone had spilled on the floor.
Built fifteen or so years earlier by Akheperenre Thutmose,
Maatkare Hatshepsut’s deceased spouse and Menkheperre
Thutmose’s father, the court contained two small limestone chapels. In each, a central stone base supported a statue of the lord Min, a fertility god identified closely with the lord
Amon. One structure was of an ancient date, built many gen erations ago by Kheperkare Senwosret, and the other more recent, erected just fifty years earlier by Djeserkare Amon hotep, grandfather to Maatkare Hatshepsut.
“Were the scrolls set on fire deliberately to burn the body?” Bak asked, thinking aloud, “or to get rid of informa tion the slayer wished to destroy? Or did the slayer-or
Woserhet himself-accidentally tip over an oil lamp and set them on fire?” He did not expect an answer and he got none.
“Woserhet was a senior scribe who reported directly to the chief priest.” Amonked’s face was grave. “I never met the man, merely saw him several times at a distance, but ac cording to Hapuseneb, the chief priest, he was extremely competent and adept at dealing with difficult situations.”