A thin-faced woman of about seventeen years knelt at the edge of the water, looking often at Kasaya, laughing with delight at his performance, while she scrubbed a winestained dress with a whitish substance Bak assumed was natron. Her long white shift was hiked up to her thighs, revealing legs as slender and muscular as her bare arms. Her hair was pulled back and hidden inside a bag-like protective cloth. Sweat poured from her brow and stained the back and underarms of her dress.
Bak scuffed his sandal, alerting her to his approach. She glanced his way and flushed, then scrambled to her feet, clutching the dress to her bosom, and attempted an awkward bow.
Suspecting Kasaya had exaggerated his importance, Bak waved off the formality. "Go on with your task, mistress Meret." He knelt at the edge of the trees, letting her know he respected her wish for secrecy. "Kasaya has told me you're willing to speak of Commander Woser's household."
She nodded, tongue-tied by shyness-or maybe shame at what she was about to do.
To one will know you've talked to me, that I promise." "Kasaya says you're a man who keeps your word," she murmured, dropping to her knees, bending over the stained dress. "Ask what you will."
Since Meret had been given the lowly task of washing linen, he guessed she was one of the lesser servants, helping in the kitchen, making beds, and dusting and sweeping in addition to doing laundry. In a frontier fortress, however, where households were small and informal, she would also sometimes help Aset with her toilet. And she would certainly gossip with the other servants.
"How did mistress Aset behave with Lieutenant Puemre? Did she act as if she cared for him?"
"The mistress is a child." Meret's smile was tender, forgiving of Aset's faults. "Her mother died when she was very young, a babe. If her father had taken another wife, she'd have learned to be a woman. Instead, he's always given her all she desires and shelters her from care and worry. She plays with his affections, and because she knows no better way, she flirts with all men, hoping to bring them to their knees as she does her father. Lieutenant Puemre was no different than the rest."
She stopped abruptly, the color spreading across her face, evidently realizing her tongue had been running away from her.
A long speech for a shy woman, Bak thought, and a strange one. Two women close to each other in age, one a household drudge, the other her pampered mistress. An ideal nest for jealousy, yet the one with nothing plainly adored the one who had everything. Kasaya must have bewitched her to get her to speak.
"What of Lieutenant Nebseny?" Bak glimpsed the Medjay leaving the water to settle down at the base of a tree, where he could watch the path from the fortress and also eavesdrop. "From what I've seen of him, he appears to be her slave, though a reluctant one."
"They're betrothed."
Bak whistled his surprise. "I'd not heard a word. Why does no one speak of it?"
"She refuses to wed." Noting Bak's raised eyebrow, Meret hastened to her mistress's defense. "She has no desire to hurt the lieutenant; she looks upon him with fondness. But she wishes above all else to live in Kemet, while he likes serving on the frontier. She fears they'll not be happy.,
Bak snorted, incredulous. "Woser lets her play that game?"
"Not willingly," Meret admitted, sprinkling more natron on the fabric and scrubbing the stain between her knuckles. "The betrothal was his wish. He and the lieutenant are as close as father and son." A thought struck her, and she smiled. "That's why Aset flirted so shamefully with Lieutenant Puemre. She thought it amusing to defy her father while at the same time she teased her betrothed."
Not tease, Bak thought, manipulate. Or, more likely, she cared not a grain of sand for what either man thought. She wanted only to wed a nobleman and live a life of wealth and ease on a great estate in Kemet. "How did Puemre respond to her?"
"He flirted, but at a distance." Her expression clouded. "Those of us who serve in the commander's residence knew of the woman he had, the armorer Senmut's daughter. We tried to warn Aset, but…" Again the tender, forgiving smile. "She's always been certain of her own charms." "Did your mistress win him at last?"
Meret lifted her eyes to Bak's. "I don't know."
The look she gave him was open and direct, free of guile or shyness. The false look of a liar, he felt sure. "I'm not asking if she won a vow of marriage, Meret. If she had, she'd have shouted her victory to all the world. I want to know…" He paused, giving his words greater emphasis. "I must know if she lay in his arms, letting him fill her belly with child."
"No!" Her eyes widened, dismay replacing the mock innocence.
"That's what the men are saying in the barracks." "Maybe that's why…" She clapped her hand to her mouth. "No, it's not true!"
He saw he had touched a raw spot. "The common soldiers, the traders, others as well, say she's with child, and Puemre wag'the father."
"He never touched her! She teased, that's all. I should know; I wash her sheets and clothing." Her face reddened at the oblique reference to her mistress's monthly cycle. She lowered her eyes and murmured, "Why must you men always believe the worst?"
Bak stared, his thoughts jolted by her words. True, he had been assuming the worst, but not the way she meant. He had been thinking of Woser's lack of cooperation, and Nebseny's, in terms of a plot against Amon-Psaro. Now this lowly servant had unwittingly reminded him that the obvious explanation was ofttimes the real one, something closer to home and more personal.
He stood up, strode to her, and caught her by the shoulders, lifting her to her feet. "Listen to me, Meret! You must be open and honest with me. If you aren't, many men may die, men innocent of wrongdoing."
She stared, her eyes huge, frightened.
He shook her none too gently, forcing a nod from her. "Tell me how Woser and Aset and Nebseny behave when they're all in one room." He could see she didn't understand. "Do they tread lightly around each other? Do they each seem to have a guilty secret, but look with suspicion at the other two?"
"How did you guess?" she whispered, overcome by awe.
He planted a big kiss on her sweat-salty forehead and released her. "Kasaya," he called, striding toward the treeS and the path that led back to Iken, "take good care of this woman. Unless I'm sadly mistaken, she's halved the number of questions I've been asking myself."
"I pray you've guessed right," Kenamon said. The elderly priest hurried along the street at Bak's side, walking in the shade of a row of white-plastered buildings. The deep shadow gave added depth to the lines of worry spanning his brow. "If each of the three is protecting the other two, perhaps none are guilty."
Bak drew the old priest into an open doorway, getting out of the way of a sweaty gnome of a man and his clattering train of five donkeys laden with burnished red pottery jugs. "If I can eliminate one man from my list of suspects, I'll think myself smiled on by the gods. If I can eliminate two, I'll feel as if the lord Amon himself has taken me by the hand."
"And if one of the two, either Woser or Nebseny slew Puemre?"
Bak smiled. "I doubt I'd survive the shock of so easy a solution."
"What of mistress Aset?"
"If my thoughts have led me down a true path, she's served as the idol around which her father and her betrothed have danced."
"The commander should long ago have handed her over to a sterner man."
The last of the donkeys trotted by, and they hurried on. The street was busy at this early and cooler hour, buzzing with the chatter of soldiers and traders, people with business inside the fortress. They strode past only two women, an officer's wife and her servant, the latter carrying an empty basket, on their way to the market.
Reaching an intersecting street, they edged past a contingent of new recruits, ten young men so raw they still smelled of the farmyard, and a grizzled spearman rushing them along at double pace. Beyond, the garrison officers and their sergeants were streaming out of the commander's residence, leaving a meeting Bak had heard had been called to discuss the presentation of arms when Amon-Psaro's entourage marched up to the gate of Iken. Bak greeted those he knew with a nod: Huy, Senu, Inyotef, and Nebseny. The archer looked through him as if he did not exist.