The Season of the Hyaena (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) by Paul Doherty Read Free Book Online Page A

priest’s eyes were hard black buttons, mouth all prim and proper. He looked too composed for a man unused to blood.
    ‘He’s not one of mine,’ he snapped. ‘Though one of our company is missing.’
    I immediately ordered a search of the palace grounds. The body of Rahmose was removed to the House of the Embalmers in the Temple of Amun, whilst I ordered the assassin’s corpse to be hung in chains by the heels from the Wall of Death, a grim grey stretch of stone, part of an ancient fort which overlooked one of the palace quaysides. The rest of the Royal Circle left as quickly as they could. The courtyard fell silent. Meryre came back.
    ‘That man,’ he insisted, ‘is not one of mine, but a lector priest is missing.’
    ‘No one knows where he is?’ I asked.
    Meryre shook his head and waddled off in a show of dignity. I sat in the shade of one of the crouching lions. Pentju came and squatted beside me, staring at the bloodstains on the paving stones. The flies were already gathering in small black clouds.
    ‘You were silent in the Royal Circle,’ I said.
    ‘You are very calm,’ he replied. ‘Rahmose was wearing your robe. Perhaps it was you the assassin was seeking?’
    I swallowed hard, rubbing my hands together to hide my own unease. The same thought had occurred to me, but there again, Rahmose was slight, with a balding head, a complete contrast to my own appearance. What did Nefertiti call me? A handsome baboon, with a heavy mouth, snub nose and shock of black hair.
    ‘Redeemed, my dear baboon,’ she would say as she pressed a finger against my lips, ‘by those large dark eyes.’
    ‘You seem unconcerned.’ Pentju broke my reverie. ‘I said Rahmose was wearing your robe.’
    I waved my hand. ‘Don’t agitate me, Pentju. You are a physician.’ I smiled at him. ‘Don’t they teach in the House of Life not to be misled by the first symptoms?’
    Pentju laughed drily, picked up the water skin between his feet, took a slurp, then offered it to me. I refused.
    ‘If you go north,’ he put the water skin back, ‘our young Prince will be left unprotected.’
    ‘Oh no he won’t,’ I replied. ‘Djarka will guard him, whilst you know that everyone in the Royal Circle needs Tutankhamun’s protection. He may be the son of the Heretic Pharaoh, but he is also the grandson of the Magnificent One, the last male heir of the Tuthmosid line. The greatest threat to our young Prince was Nefertiti, and she’s gone. Now, tell me, Physician, why were you so silent?’
    ‘That impostor who has appeared in the Delta.’ Pentju sucked on his lips. ‘It’s not Akenhaten. In the last months before his disappearance he often talked to me, Mahu, especially about his son. He entrusted him to me and instructed me that if anything happened to him, you were to be the boy’s official guardian. He said you were different from the rest, Mahu, on three points: you had little ambition, you were loyal and you were searching for your soul.’
    I glanced away: that was the old Akenhaten, the Veiled One, the Grotesque. I had befriended him when we were both boys, mere strangers in this great palace.
    ‘I tell you,’ Pentju continued in a hurried whisper, ‘Akenhaten believed that he too had lost his soul. He said he would never find it in the City of the Aten, that he would withdraw into the Red Lands and wait for his God to come.’
    ‘And you think he did that?’
    ‘I know he did.’
    ‘So, do you think he is still alive?’
    ‘He may be.’
    ‘So why shouldn’t he emerge to reclaim his throne and once again wear the double crown of Egypt?’
    ‘Akenhaten believed he had found the One True God. People think,’ Pentju chose his words carefully, ‘that he’d slipped into madness, convinced he was the One God himself, but that’s not true. If Akenhaten saw God in anyone, it wasn’t really himself, but Nefertiti. He adored her. He loved her. He was infatuated with her. You know that, Mahu. Then the truth about