Or did you leave Tjeny for a time?”
“Why would I leave? Pentu and his father before him have always been good to me. Through his father’s generos ity, I learned to read and write. I studied with Pentu as a child, played with him. I’m pleased to count him among my friends. Of equal import, he raised me up to my present po sition. If not for him, I’d be toiling in the fields with my brothers.”
Bak noted the pride on the aide’s face, the devotion of a servant for a longtime master. “Did Pentu not go to Waset as a child to study in the royal house, as other noble youths do?”
“Yes, sir, but he didn’t remain for long. His father died when he was twelve years of age and he had to return to
Tjeny to assume his duties as landowner and to learn from his uncle the duties of a governor.”
“He never served in the army?”
“No, sir.”
Bak wondered if any man who had spent his life so close to his provincial birthplace would become involved in the politics of another land. Netermose’s very innocence might allow him to stumble into a predicament that was beyond his understanding, but to venture into a situation he understood would be unlikely. Pentu must have been almost as shel tered, so the same would most likely be true for him. Why, in the name of the lord Amon, had Maatkare Hatshepsut named him her envoy to a distant and alien land like Hatti?
“Tell me of Sitepehu. He was a soldier in Retenu, he said, but I know little else about him.”
Netermose turned away to throw a handful of kitchen leavings into the river. The ducks fluttered across the water to grab what they could. Quacks blended in a single ear splitting racket. “I don’t like speaking of a man behind his back, Lieutenant.”
“Better to speak of him now than to find him one morning with his throat cut. As Maruwa’s was. Or to find him cutting someone else’s throat, possibly yours.”
The aide flushed, then spoke with a reluctance that gradu ally diminished. “He served in the infantry from the age of fourteen and rose to the lofty position of lieutenant, learning to read and write along the way. He likes to say he climbed through the ranks with the tenacity of a hyena stalking its prey. He was wounded, came close to dying. You saw the scar on his shoulder. He went to his sister, who dwelt in Tjeny, to recover.
“Pentu met him, liked him, and took him into his house hold as a scribe.” The aide’s smile was rueful. “I sometimes resent his success in Tjeny, in our household, but I’m the first to admit he never shirks his duty. He rapidly attained the position of chief scribe, and thus he went with us to Hattusa.
When we returned, Pentu appointed him chief priest of the lord Inheret.”
“While a soldier, did he ever travel beyond Retenu to the land of Hatti?”
“If so, he never said.”
They walked on, each man immersed in his own thoughts.
Bak had no doubt that Sitepehu could steal up behind a man and slay him with a single slash of a blade. He had been trained in the art of death, and his heavily muscled shoulders and arms would ease the act. But Bak liked the priest, en joyed his wry sense of humor, preferred not to think of him as a heartless killer.
Ahead, the grassy verge narrowed, squeezed between the riverbank and the massive enclosure wall around Ipet-resyt.
A dozen small boats nudged the bank below an unimpres sive gate. Accompanied by the clinking of fittings and the chatter of men who knew each other well, fishermen and farmers hurried across boards spanning the narrow gap be tween boats and shore, balancing on their shoulders baskets of fruits and vegetables and fish. They passed through the gate, delivering offerings perhaps. Or simply food to be con sumed by hungry priests and scribes.
Bak and his companion turned around to walk back the way they had come.
“I recall Pahure saying he was once a sailor,” Bak said.
Netermose nodded. “He’s quite proud of the fact that as a young man he sailed the Great Green Sea.”
“Is he, too, a man of Tjeny?”
“You might call him a neighbor. He came from Abedju.
His sister dwells there yet.”
The two cities were about a half day’s walk apart. “Pentu dwells in Tjeny. It’s the provincial capital, I know, but would it not be to his advantage to make his home in Abedju in stead? It’s a larger city and far more sacred, with many sig nificant tombs and shrines, and pilgrims constantly coming from afar. I’d think his presence would be required almost daily.”
“His estate lies between the two-closer to Tjeny, I must admit. He’d rather live there than in his town house in
Abedju. The dwelling is far lighter and more spacious, and mistress Taharet prefers it to the smaller, less comfortable home.”
What mistress Taharet desires, Bak thought, mistress
Taharet receives. “With so many priests needed for the sa cred rituals, as well as the men and women who support them, does he not have many responsibilities in Abedju?”
“He goes weekly, staying several days each time. He doesn’t shirk his duty, sir.”
It must be a relief to hurry off to Abedju and wield the power he cannot exercise at home, Bak thought. “Tell me more of Pahure.”
Netermose hesitated, as he had when asked about Site pehu, but Bak’s grim expression urged him on. “He and his sister had no father and their mother toiled in a house of pleasure. Often besotted, she beat them. One day Pahure ran away. He slipped aboard a cargo ship and sailed to Men nufer, where he joined the crew of a merchant vessel bound for Ugarit. After a few years sailing the Great Green Sea, he jumped ship in Tyre, where he became a guard in the resi dence of our envoy to that city-state.”
The aide reached into the basket and threw another hand ful into the river. Birds collided in a mass of feathers and quacking. “Like Sitepehu, Pahure is a man of infinite deter mination. He taught himself to read and write and after a few years became the envoy’s steward. When he thought to re turn to the land of his birth, he sought a similar position in our household.”
“What do you think of him?” Bak asked, wondering if the aide resented the steward as he did Sitepehu.
Netermose’s smile was sheepish. “I don’t much like him, but he performs his task in an exemplary manner.”
“Sitepehu inferred that Pahure is a man who knows ex actly what he wants and always attains his goal.”
“In that respect, the two of them are much alike.” The aide’s smile broadened. “Pentu has more than once told me I should be more aggressive. Not only am I not inclined that way, but I’m convinced that to have three such men in one household would be disastrous.”
Bak laughed, but quickly sobered. He hesitated to ask his next question, but could think of no way around it, no better approach than the most direct. “Tell me of the mistresses
Taharet and Meret.”
Netermose threw him a startled look. “You can’t think one of them slew Maruwa!”
“I have no idea who slew the Hittite, but I learned some time ago that women are as capable of committing vile crimes as are men.”
“Mistress Meret is the kindest woman I’ve ever met,”
Netermose said, indignant, “and as for mistress Taharet, it’s true she’s strong-willed, but she’d never knowingly hurt anyone.”
Bak noted how carefully the aide worded his defense of
Taharet, his use of the word “knowingly.” “Would you rather tell me about them or would you prefer I ask someone else, someone who might not be as generous about Taharet’s sharp tongue?”
Looking miserable, cornered, Netermose raised the bas ket and flung the remaining contents far out into the water, causing another eruption of feathers and racket. “She’s not the most tactful woman in Kemet,” he admitted, “but she doesn’t mean to be heartless.”
“Were she and Meret also children of Tjeny?”
“Their father was a merchant in Sile, and there they grew to womanhood.” The aide glanced into the basket, found a piece of melon rind, and flung it at the squabbling birds.
