The Season of the Hyaena (Ancient Egyptian Mysteries) by Paul Doherty

here.’
    I sat waiting for the shaking to stop. Sobeck arrived. I told him what had happened and asked him to check the House of Adoration. He returned.
    ‘All is well.’ He pulled a stool towards me and sat down. ‘An inauspicious day for you, my lord?’
    The captain of the guard returned, and announced that two women had been seen carrying a laundry basket into my chamber.
    ‘Didn’t you search it?’
    ‘We did,’ the Captain protested. ‘But the snakes were probably coiled at the bottom. When you lift a lid off a basket, master, and you see linen sheets, the idea of snakes never occurs to you.’
    I bellowed at him not to be sarcastic and ordered him to arrest the two laundry women and bring them before me. Sobeck poured me some wine. A short while later two women, whom I recognised as serving in the royal quarters, were hustled up, their faces creased with sleep, terrified at the accusations levelled against them. The guards had not been gentle; one of the women already had a bloody lip. They nosed the ground before me, their cries and shrieks ringing through the chamber. I pressed a foot against each of their heads.
    ‘Look up,’ I ordered, withdrawing my foot.
    Both women raised tear-streaked faces.
    ‘The Captain has told you?’
    Again shrieks and cries from the older one, but the younger, apparently her daughter, glared fiercely at me.
    ‘We will die,’ she protested, ‘for something we did not do.’
    I told her mother to shut up and turned back to her.
    ‘Why, what did you do?’
    ‘We were in the laundry room,’ she gabbled. ‘We were eating bread and drinking beer, our usual meal, our duties finished. A messenger came in. We thought it was one of the chamberlains. He said laundry had to be taken to your quarters and we were told to do it immediately. The basket was outside the door.’
    ‘But you brought fresh sheets,’ I countered, ‘earlier today.’
    ‘He said wine had been spilt, that we were to take the basket up immediately. So we did, it was searched by your guard and we left it in the chamber. We were puzzled because we looked at the bed and could not see any stains; it was as we left it earlier. My lord, we are just servants. We do what we are told.’
    I studied both women closely and recognised their innocence. I drained the gold-embossed wine cup and thrust it into the young woman’s hands.
    ‘In future only take orders from someone you recognise – now go!’
    I told the mercenary captain to clear the chamber and sat for a while with Sobeck.
    ‘Before you ask,’ he stretched out his legs, ‘it could be anyone. That’s the real danger here, Mahu. This is not like a battle where you know friend from foe.’
    That night I slept in the Prince’s chamber and awoke early to prepare for the great oath-taking in the Hall of Appearances. I shaved and washed carefully. I donned my finest robes of pure-white gauffered linen, bound round the middle with a blue and red-gold sash, collars of gold round my neck. I went and greeted the Prince, then walked along cavernous echoing passages and into the central courtyard with its soaring statues of Anubis and Horus. The rest of the Royal Circle with their retinues clustered at the foot of the palace steps. I had walked there alone, determined to show how the events of the night before had not frightened me. Of course, the news had spread. Each one came up to express his horror; to urge that the perpetrator of such an assault should be searched out and executed. I thanked them all grimly.
    The High Priest Anen came down the steps, his acolytes, heads all shaven, dressed in their purest robes, almost hidden by the gusts of incense. We lined up in formal procession and climbed the palace steps, past the pillars brilliantly decorated with every known colour depicting inscriptions and paintings of long-dead Pharaohs, through the great bronze-plated doors and into the Hall of Appearances. Here the divine choirs were ready, singing a hymn to the