Out of the Black Land - By Kerry Greenwood Page 0,178

reluctant witness.

‘When I looked up to see where he fell from,’ she said, making herself speak, ‘I saw Divine Father Ay looking down on me.’

‘And?’

‘He wasn’t shocked,’ she said.

Though this was not evidence, it was evidential. I still didn’t understand the knife. I touched it and raised an eyebrow.

‘I have been trying to summon the courage to go and confront my father about this death,’ she said. I took the knife away.

‘If this terrible thing did take place,’ I told her, ‘we must wait. If he means to take power, he will show his hand.’

‘He already has,’ she said tonelessly. ‘He sent to Ankhesenamen and told her to prepare to marry him, when her husband is buried. You can hear her,’ she said.

Indeed; a long, sobbing shriek in a female voice had been noticeable from the moment I walked into the palace.

‘Then we must tell the general,’ I said.

‘I have sent a message to him, but he is on the border, dealing with the Canaanite incursion. I have tried to call him, but we were never close like you and I are close. He will not be able to feel my fear. He might, however, get my message. But it will take him a long time to get here,’ she said.

I worried about her. She did not seem angry. She was not reacting at all. It seemed that this dreadful murderous act of Ay, her father, might be the last straw which broke the ass’ back for Mutnodjme.

‘Come, woman, where is your hospitality?’ I demanded. ‘Here I am, your husband, newly returned from a long journey, and are there garlands? Is there wine? Must I kiss your feet, Mistress of the House, for a wash and some oil?’

‘You may kiss my feet if you wish,’ she said with a return of some spirit. ‘And you shall certainly be tended. Come, my dear.’

If I felt her emotions, she felt mine. And I was not afraid.

If Ay took power, then things might not go so badly for Egypt, though they would certainly go badly for me. There were worse persons than misers for Pharaoh. If Ay proved incompetent, then returning Horemheb might have another solution. In any case, we could do nothing on our own, and just for my own sense of justice, I would investigate who had been where when the young king fell from the wall.

It did not take me long, just by walking around and asking idle questions, to locate the king on the wall. He had gone up there shortly before noon, without any guards. I could not speak to the Great Royal Wife because she was still wailing. She had been doing this for days. I understood how bitter her fate was, but I wished that she would mourn it in silence. The sobbing wail was hurting my ears.

But I did speak to one of the servants of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen-Osiris; the son of that Khety who was Half Great Royal Scribe. The boy had known me since he had been a small child. Khety-Tashery, which means Little Khety—for an imaginative man Khety was surprisingly unimaginative at naming children—was willing to be taken on a walk by someone whom he looked on as an uncle, and willingly accompanied me on the king’s last journey.

‘He came here to look at the river,’ said Khety-Tashery. ‘You get the best view of it from here, because the temple of the Aten isn’t in the way.’

I could see a long way down the Nile in one direction, and several shoeni up the river the other way. I could see the docks where the fishing boats came in, and the front door of the palace. Yes, it was a charming place to stand and look out over one’s domain.

‘And from here he fell,’ I said quietly. I could see no marks on the stone. Khety-Tashery began to weep.

‘He wouldn’t let us come with him,’ he sobbed. ‘But he came up here with someone.’

‘So he wasn’t alone?’ I asked.

‘No, lord. He said he had something to say to the person that he didn’t want anyone else to hear; so they wouldn’t be shamed.’

‘And you don’t know who it was, Khety-Tashery?’

‘No, lord.’ He paused, as though he might have been going to say something more. I did not speak but raised an eyebrow and motioned for him to continue.

‘It’s nothing, lord. Nothing much, anyway. He talked about dismissing some officials, lord, because they had been stealing from the crown. He’d been about to summon