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Meren could hear the wails and screams before he reached the street where Hormin had lived. Word of the scribe's death had reached his family, and someone had already hired professional mourners to ply their trade on the small loggia that protected the entrance to the house. One tore at her hair. Another beat her breasts and moaned. The third shrieked on such a high note that Meren covered his ears. His two assistants did the same.
He had seen better performances. Whoever hired the mourners had not paid enough to get the extras. No rak ing of nails on flesh, no throwing of earth over the body. Meren hurried by the women, only to encounter the household porter. The man bowed several times, but Meren gave him no chance to protest the intrusion, ordering the porter to conduct him to the family.
Once they were inside, the screams of the mourners faded. The porter led him through an entryway, a columned outer hall, and up a staircase. Meren was halfway up the stairs when a shout made him look up. This was not a wail of grief, but a voice climbing the musical scale in wrath. Like the honking of disturbed geese, voices warred with one another. As Meren gained the second floor he heard a woman yell. It was a sound made powerful by healthy lungs, a noise that filled the world with its clamor.
'Robbery! You picking and sneaking thief. Whore.' A man's voice joined in. 'She took the broad collar.' Meren swept by the porter and into the room from which the noise came. Before him were four people standing in the midst of a litter of papers, open boxes and caskets, chairs, and tables. Meren paused inside the door. One of the women cursed. She picked up something from a table and hurled it at the two men. They ducked and the missile sped past them to crash at Meren's feet. It was a faience spice pot. The pottery cracked and red powder burst forth, spraying Meren's gold sandals and feet.
The woman who had thrown the pot squeaked and ducked behind a chair. Meren looked from his sandals to the woman. She was young, with long arms and legs strung with tense muscles and a short, sharp nose like the beak of a sparrow.
Knowing that he had startled them all, Meren directed his gaze to each of the quarrelers. The older woman was looking at him with a puzzled expression. She had the dark brown skin of a peasant but the uncallused hands of a lady. Standing in front of her was a man as tall as she was, who had not made a sound when the others were shouting at the young woman. Beside him was a shorter man, a youth really. He balanced on the balls of his feet and caressed one of his wrists with his hand. Twisting the wrist back and forth within the grasp of his fingers, he stared at Meren.
They were trying to decide who he might be. It was a favorite tactic of his to appear without announcement, to disturb and unbalance. He knew they were taking in the transparent robe that fell to his ankles and covered a kilt belted in red and gold. His long court wig and inlaid dagger would cause apprehension, as would the two men who stood behind him like bodyguards, for
30 Lynda 5. Robinson only a great man walks abroad in fine linen, carries a warrior's blade, and commands charioteers.
'I am Meren.' The name caused a stirring among them like papyrus reeds shifting in the north wind. Four heads lowered, and Meren received their bows. 'Evil has been done in the sacred place of embalming, and I am sent to hunt out the criminal who murdered the scribe Hormin.'
Lifting his foot out of a hillock of spice, Meren skirted the shards of faience and took a chair of cedar with legs shaped like those of a lion.
'There has been theft in this house?' Meren asked.
Four heads nodded.
'Last night?'
Again the nods.
Meren looked from one bowed head to the other and decided to break up the solid phalanx. If he confronted each of them alone, it would be impossible for them to remain silent.
'I will survey the house and question each of the family.' Meren nodded at the older woman. 'You, mistress, are the wife of Hormin?'
'Yes, my lord.'
This was the voice of the woman who had yelled as he came upstairs.
'Take your family to the dining hall and await my summons.' It was his experience that the anxiety of waiting to be examined by one of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh loosened tongues.
One of his men ushered the family out and went with mem. When they were gone Meren summoned the porter, who produced the chief manservant. With this guide and his remaining assistant, Meren toured the house of Hormin.
It was the house of a prosperous scribe; there were many such in the capital of the empire. A basement housed workrooms used for weaving, bread making, and other chores. Above lay a reception hall and dining room, and above these the family bedrooms and lavatory. On the roof was the kitchen.
To Meren the house appeared ordinary. White-plastered, painted with friezes of lotus petals and geometric designs in bright red, blue, yellow, and green, it contained simple furnishings. The beds, tables, stools, and chairs were of good but not costly wood, the seats of woven rushes.
On the way back from his tour, Meren stuck his head in the door of the scribe's bedchamber. The bed sat at the far end; clothing boxes and a cosmetic table were arranged around the walls. One of his men knelt at a box that held Hormin's kilts, lifted each one, and laid it on the floor.
Meren turned away and headed for the room where he'd first encountered Hormin's family, the man's personal office. Here the furniture was of cedar inlaid with ebony and ivory. Gilt paint adorned Hormin's chair and table, and there were three boxes and four storage caskets, each of expensive wood. One was inlaid with ivory and ebony marquetry. Several alabaster lamps rested on tables, and there was one casket carved from the same stone.
All of the containers bore Hormin's name. Meren touched the obsidian knob on the lid of the alabaster casket, lifted the cover, and placed it aside. Within were fourteen glass bottles and vials. Meren unstopped a vial and sniffed the perfume within. He opened a pot and touched the tip of his finger to the salve within. It was unguent; from the scent, costly unguent, made of foreign spices and resins. Yet it wasn't the same as that he'd found on Hormin's kilt.
Replacing the unguent, Meren summoned the porter and ordered him to bring the wife of Hormin to him. He arranged himself in Hormin's chair and picked up a gilt penholder from the table beside him. Removing the top, he shook out several reed pens and replaced them. He was twirling the penholder when the porter announced Selket, the wife of Hormin.
She must have been of an age with her husband, for Selket bore the signs of middle age. There were pockets of flesh beneath her eyes. The flesh of her upper arms drooped like empty barley sacks, and her skin was as cracked and dry as old wood left in the desert. Without speaking to her, Meren knew that this woman had spent her youth laboring in the sun and heat. She stood before him with her eyes fixed on sheets of papyrus scattered on the floor at her feet. Meren gave her permission to sit, and the woman took a stool.
'Please accept my condolences upon the death of your husband, mistress. I'm here to seek out his murderer.'
Selket's face had been as blank as the outfacing wall of a house. At his words, it cracked open and from it erupted a flood of venom.
'It's her. She killed him for his wealth or to hide her depravities. She beds any pretty man who comes into her sight, you know. My husband must have found her out.' Selket's arms swept around indicating the disturbed room. 'Or perhaps she killed him for finding her in his office pilfering.'
'Who?'
'Beltis, my lord. That creature who tried to wound you with the spice pot. She is my-was my husband's concubine.'
This was why Meren cultivated the skill of listening. He remembered the admonition of the sage Ptahhotep, which advised a wise man not to listen to the spouting of the hot-bellied. He had found that listening to the hot-
