'Berenice fed her son enough hemlock to fell a horse,' Shabak said bluntly, and there was no mistaking the hostility in his voice.
Damn.
He'd recognised Claudia from last night, when he'd been bandaging Geb's burn near the kitchens. Now here she was, poking around again, muddying waters which ought by rights to be left placid, asking questions where none should be asked.
Claudia flashed Junius a quick catch-up-with-you-later look. Her priority now was to rootle out Flavia, Flea and the puppy, then get the hell out of here.
This whole place gave her the creeps.
No one missed her, because this was a public holiday, the first day of Ibis, and everyone was entitled to join the festivities, however lowly one's role.
A cold collation had been laid out in the dining hall the previous night, and the kitchens were eerily still. No steam, no clattering pans, no spillages, no fingers nicked from sharp knives.
No bodies getting in each other's way.
No one to notice that several bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling had gone missing.
Tomorrow, when normal service would resume, Mentu's great agricultural machine would crank back into action, along with the kitchens, the scribes, the brewhouse, the charcoal burners in the woods, the small squad of healers who mixed potions for Shabak. No one worked in the laundry today. The large, flat scrubbing stones lay piled in neat heaps, airing lines hung limp and bare after last night's deluge.
It would be tomorrow before anyone noted the absence of a moody girl who had never mixed with the crowd.
It would be much later before anyone cared.
Chapter Twenty-four
Whether you liked to call this public holiday by its Mentu-name of Lotus or simply preferred the idea of it being a good, old-fashioned Saturday, there was no disputing the jollity of the occasion. After the sacrifice and the ensuing penances, the band struck up again and off the cult members twirled, in their wigs and kilts and diamond-patterned shifts, dancing and clapping and singing at the tops of their voices like… well, like proper Pyramidiots!
But they were happy. For all his faults, Mentu made these people happy, by giving them, Claudia supposed, exactly what they wanted. A refuge from real life, with prayers and work to control and discipline their minds, interspersed with festivals like today when they could let off steam. Supply and demand, it kept the world turning; Claudia had no real objection to that.
'I simply don't wish to be part of it!' she told a small toddler, picking her up and swirling her round so her legs fanned high in the air.
The toddler chortled and gargled and made giggly noises and Claudia's arms were aching badly by the time she set the girl down, but as she turned away, tears of disappointment welled up in the huge, doe-like eyes, forcing her to pull off the tot's nose at least seventeen times before hunger pangs took over from fun and little fat legs waddled off to scavenge the last of the bull meat from the sacrificial platters. Watching her, Claudia felt a pang for this beautiful, happy creature for whom outsiders would always be enemies, who would never experience the cut and thrust of bartering in a street market redolent with spices and liniments and vellum, never even see cloth bales fluttering in every colour of the rainbow, much less encase herself in floaty tunics or diaphanous, feminine wraps. Sweet Juno, those little fat feet would never learn to walk in soft, tooled-leather slippers, no perfumer would mix a personal scent for the grown woman to wear. She would not smell the sea, not even a river, or gasp at the wonder of a flotilla under full sail, canvas bellied out in the wind. She would never see olive groves tumbling over the hillsides, or the breathtaking spectacle of an army marching off to war. For that little girl, the excitement of two Titan gladiators battling it out in the arena would remain a mystery, as would the thrill of a chariot race. In their place, she was doomed to a life of servitude, in a valley from which there could be no escape.
Claudia watched the grease dribble down the child's chubby little chin, and felt a tear trickle down her own cheek.
With a sideways peep she noticed Shabak leading Junius towards his hut for treatment and knew enough about her bodyguard to know he'd raise the subject of Berenice, the baby and the hemlock, man to man, as it were, over the dressings. She doubted he'd get far with his interrogation. Shabak was not the rugged boys-together type!
Over on the temple platform, Mentu and his nine cohorts clapped and swayed, the crocodile dancing hand in hand with the vulture and the cat, the ibis garlanded with flowers to mark his special day. She looked at them. Glanced at the Pharaoh's domestic wing. Glanced back.
And felt a spark of mischief kindle in her breast.
The wing was deserted as Claudia slipped through the door and, in the silence, heard herself gasp. Good grief! Dazzling mosaics spread themselves across the floor and stretched away to infinity. Lurid paintings covered the walls, hunting scenes, battles, gods versus giants, all the way up to the gilt, stucco ceiling. The first room she entered was Mentu's, and it was clear the simple life was not for him. A bed of pure bronze lay smothered under piles of swansdown cushions and sheets of iridescent damask. In the centre of the mound, sprawled flat on its side, a jet-black tomcat encased in rolls of fat lifted half an eyelid.
'Sssh!' Claudia placed her fingers to her lips.
The eyelid closed. Not even a stiff white whisker twitched as the intruder poked around inside chests of maple wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl and inspected gold statuettes, ivories, hinged jewellery boxes filled with rings and amulets and cloak pins. If he wore one pin for every tunic with a different amulet and, say, three different rings each day, Claudia calculated that it would take several months to wade through this lot.
The cat was snoring as she slipped into the adjacent room. In here, a sunken bath was surrounded by white marble statues whose lifeless toes pirouetted on glazed floor tiles lit by a score of alabaster lamps. The finest linen towels stood stacked against a chest containing oils and unguents, strigils, scissors, clippers. Water lilies floated in the water, which was warm.
She moved on to what had served the previous owner as a lofty, vaulted atrium and where, in pride of place, a throne of pure gold in the shape of a couchant lion stood beneath a tasselled awning which had been suspended to fan the Pharaoh as he rested. Fragrant resins pumped out their expensive aromas from braziers mounted high on the walls, and ribbons, ivies and garlands of bright scented flowers wound their way round pillars of the finest Parian marble to the red-painted capitals.
So many colours, so many scents, each and every one vying for attention. The golden stucco ceiling was adorned with flying beasts. A drunken Bacchus was surrounded by leering satyrs, all pawing the same weary nymph. Leopards were disembowelling a stag. So much colour, so much heat, so much movement. So much coming at you at once and none of it pleasant. Claudia's instinct was to step back. To retreat. To escape.
Then she remembered the delighted squeals of a little girl spinning through the air, and instead of turning round, her long legs marched her purposefully forward down the wing. Quite what sabotage Claudia planned to carry out, she wasn't sure, only that Mentu must be stopped. It was sickening enough what he was turning decent people into, and irrelevant that his victims queued up willingly in droves.
Mentu had no right to deny that child her proper destiny.
Other rooms led off from the central corridor, equally opulent, equally lavish in their decoration. In a line, five scented chambers each comprising four beds divided by shimmering drapes and compensating with onyx, tortoiseshell and silver what they lacked in privacy. These, then, were the chambers where Mentu's twenty wives slept and, across the hall, their recreation room. More pillows. More diaphanous drapes. A lyre propped against a chair leg. A tapestry loom. Goblets of gold, salvers of bronze piled with apricots, peaches and plums. Claudia ran her finger over the polished maple-wood couches upholstered in scarlet and green before closing the door on this room where intimate, cloying secrets swapped in hushed whispers still drifted in the sultry air.