JENNIFER MUELLER

EGYPTIAN DAYS
 
Published by Linden Bay Romance, 2006
 
Linden Bay Romance, LLC, U.S.
 
ISBN Trade paperback: 978-1-60202-042-9
ISBN MS Reader (LIT): 978-1-60202-043-6
 
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Copyright © JENNIFER MUELLER, 2006
 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 
The work is protected by copyright and should not be copied without permission. Linden Bay Romance, LLC reserves all rights. Re-use or re-distribution of any and all materials is prohibited under law.
 
This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or business establishments, events or locales is coincidental.

When you are established and you wish to found a household, take yourself a loving wife who will bear you a son.
 
            From The Teachings of Hordjedef

Chapter 1
 
Victoria sat on the roof of the house overlooking the Nile beyond the tall wall. Some distance away were cliffs that hemmed in the river on both sides. She knew, unlike everyone around her, where its source was. Far to the south the blue and white Niles merged. Further south than that, in Uganda, a country that didn’t even exist yet, the Nile started. Every year flooding, bringing life to the lands of Egypt. 
 
A cry from somewhere in the compound brought her mind to the present; mandrake with its yellow fruits, red poppies, and blue cornflowers all bloomed below her. Tall palm trees reached to the sky, and there were vineyards in the center of the compound. Fishponds broke the monotony of trees and plants, magnificent flowering plants almost bent under the weight of the blooms. Arbors for resting were scattered here and there under the wide shade of ancient olive and fig trees. It had been four years since she had arrived in Egypt to inhabit a body not her own, four years since her husband had killed her in a jealous rage in her other life. By no means the first time had he beaten her. 
 
Victoria had expanded the variety of vegetables and fruit despite the already impressive garden that a grandfather had treasured above a mass“

Like eye paint, my desire, when I see you it makes my eyes brighter,” Khaemhat said behind her. Four years since she had come to Khaemhat, the only explanation that her soul had switched with Mayati, his wife who had just died in childbirth. The cliffs in the distance held the tombs of her family, a family she had never met, not even the child that had killed the body she now inhabited.
 
Victoria smiled to herself where he couldn’t see it. “On whose tomb did you see that inscription?” 
 
“Nakht, the perfumist. His widow Emuishéré sent something for you.” A priest to the god Osiris, the god of the dead, Khaemhat saw many tombs and often came to her with the inscriptions he liked the most.
 
Victoria turned at that. She had forgotten how magnificent the man she was married to looked. Bronze shaved head, narrow hips, and chest bare showing broad shoulders, there was something about kohl on a man that did something to her, too. It had been months since she had seen him. “Me?” The alabaster jar he held up was answer enough. Victoria turned back to the view of the river, trying not to smile. The man had gotten her used to his touch, showing her how to use the unguents his former wife had left in abundance.ive house.

“She knows we are going to the banquet; she thinks you have been neglecting yourself.”
 
Victoria stared for a moment. Just because she had been here four years didn’t mean she had everything about life figured out. “She just lost a husband and she’s worried about me?”
 
“Emuishéré wanted you to know how happy she is you finally became a respected woman and gave me a child.”
 
“She what?” It had been a year since little Adjo, their treasure, had been born. They had spent nine months worried she would die again in childbirth as she had before. Souls might have changed, but narrow hips hadn’t.
 
Khaemhat sat down behind her, not giving her outburst an answer. “Cyprinum,” he whispered in her ear.
 
The sound of his voice alone was enough to make the want pool between her legs. He had been there when Adjo was born, but duties at the main temple had taken him away before she came out of confinement. Khaemhat lived in their house in Thebes in order to fulfill his duties at the temple to Osiris, where she had lived as well until the child was due to be born. She had planned to return after a few months, but a meager harvest had needed someone there to deal with the aftermath. Far too many nights she had been alone since the child was born.
 
“Do you still have the pleated green robe? Wear it alone tonight to the banquet.” Strong hands pulled the diaphanous linen dress over her head. She knew he was making his fingers graze every inch as he undressed her. It was not as if the dresses covered that much, but it was some measure against a modern day woman’s morals rebelling at being naked. It had taken some getting used to, wearing dresses that left her breasts open for view. Not to mention they were sheer as a handkerchief, leaving every curve in sight. As sexy as they might have sounded, though, they were rather boring. They were dresses, not fashion, dresses. They never changed year in, year out, same linen sheath dress. The only difference was some had two straps other than one, but none covered her breasts. If she wished to show off, she might tie a scarf shaped piece around her and cover up. But usually she would just wear more jewelry. No one noticed anything when covered in jewels.
 
Victoria sighed as his hands touched her, warm with perfume; the scent filled the air, even overpowering the flowers. “I’m naked then,” Victoria protested, but his hands kneading the knots in her shoulders made it a weak protest.
 
He was chuckling in her ear. “I know. Why do you think I want you to wear it? Emuishéré thought Cyprinum would go well with gold dust covering every wonderful inch of you.”
 
“I had a child a year ago.”
 
“I am no longer a priest, and if I am able to enjoy you every night, I wish to see you. All of you.”
 
Victoria tried to turn and look at him, but he held her still. 
 
“No longer a priest?” Victoria asked, but gentle hands slipped to her front, caressing her breasts still large from the child. The oil made his hands glide over her with a touch barely there as she felt him growing hard against her back. He only kissed her neck as he continued distributing the oil to every inch of her body. And then…and then his hand slid between her legs. Victoria buried her gasp in his neck, not moving her mouth, afraid the voices she could hear below would hear her.
 
“There is why I am no longer a priest,” Khaemhat whispered. “I miss having you arch in my arms at my touch, hearing you try to muffle your cry and failing. I miss your mouth on me. I sent the servants away, we’ll dress ourselves tonight for the banquet. Enehy is taking Adjo with her. Don’t hide it. I want to hear you when they are gone.” Pulling her arms up around his neck, a task in itself while slick with oil, he showed no signs of noticing she had changed with the child as his mouth took hers. Hands caressed over the bulge in her stomach that even a year hadn’t erased. All other signs of giving birth to Adjo had melted away but that one. Mayati would have panicked, but running the estate kept Victoria busy. His fingers took hold once more where her want throbbed hardest, the whimper at her lips made him chuckle in her ear. When his arm wrapped around her, that was the end of his playing nice. His pace quickened and Victoria was unable to stop the cry from filling the air. The voices she heard had hardly left the courtyard.
 
“Now I can take my time.”
 
Victoria wasn’t sure when the pallet had appeared on the roof; had she been so lost in thought she hadn’t heard him before he spoke? He lifted her bodily, and she was soon lying amongst the blankets staring at a bouquet of blue and white lotus blossoms. Victoria gasped as he quickly entered her; just as quickly Khaemhat stopped. His shaved head blocking the sun from her face, he traced every curve before him.
 
“How have things been, wife?”
 
Victoria couldn’t help but laugh. “A business report—I should have known.”
 
“You are my business, Victoria. Should I not know how you are?”

It was the first time he had actually said her name. He knew they were different women. The face he stared at was the wife he had married, but the eyes staring back were not hers. He knew that, often speaking of ‘she’, the woman of the past, but never saying the name of the woman inhabiting her body now.
 
“I thought you meant the business of the estate?”
 
Khaemhat shook his head. “Memnet-Ra sends reports. I know you have gotten our estate through the bad harvest well.”
 
Victoria rolled all at once, loving the feel of Khaemhat pushed even further inside her. The Gods had blessed the man; that was for certain. “Things have been lonely, but my day is looking much better suddenly.”
 
“Mayati!” came a yell from below. “A barge showed up unexpectedly, they have supplies we need.”
 
“No, you stay quiet,” Victoria whispered, already moving her hips. She had been sated, but Khaemhat had not. His eyes closed as she rocked back and forth. “I’ll be there in a moment, Bent-Aneth; give the men some ale,” she called before muffling his moan with her kiss. Her fingers, light against his chest, skimmed over him, coating him in oil as much as she was but never letting up her rhythm. It had been too long for both of them, she felt him growing larger inside her the moment before life poured into her. Victoria kissed his nose softly. “You forget I know that body better than you. There’s always time.” She smiled at him as she pulled her dress back on. “Welcome back, husband.”
 
“The house in Thebes is low on olive oil; see if they have any. And I have plans for putting the gold on you.”
 
“That’s assuming you can get up by then. Looks like I wore you out.” Victoria dashed off the roof before Khaemhat could throw the bouquet of flowers at her.
 
~
 
There were none of the trappings of being a priest to Osiris seen when they boarded the boat to take them down the river for the banquet, a massive three-day affair that she had been hearing the details of from servant gossip for the last week. All the boatmen stared at the vision of gold that came aboard. The vision in the highly polished metal mirror was still in her eyes, dark hair and eyes; Mayati was exotic and in more than just skin color. She was tall and thin with a set to her head that seemed to speak loudly that she knew she was something unique, that she was beautiful. Her skin was bronze, a color the sun had no part in providing. She had darkened since arriving, too, spending her days out; running the estate were not days hidden in the mansion, having servants do everything for her. Her features were delicate, seductive with almond shaped eyes that could have come from China and not Africa. Her long hair was clearly that of Africa, even if the features weren’t. One surly looking fellow stared more than the rest; he gave Victoria the willies the way he kept slapping a large club in his hand over and over as he looked her up and down, his meaning all too obvious. The minute Khaemhat came up behind her he turned away quickly. His club hung limply at his side.
 
Victoria hated to admit that after four years Neil could still intrude on her thoughts. There were no lingering screams that entered her head as there once had been, but her eyes seemed drawn to men she could easily see beating their wives. Khaemhat said it was impossible with the way women were revered, but it never quite took the fear away that someone else was enduring what she had once endured.
 
Her thoughts of the past faded quickly with a glass of wine under a canopy to keep the sun off. “I suppose now that you are not a priest, it would be expensive to have the garden carved in our tomb. I’ve been thinking lately how I would like to have it with me for eternity.”
 
“Any particular reason?”
 
“Why would you ask that?” Victoria started laughing. There was no need for him to answer. Every time they had joined, it was either on the roof in sight of the garden or in the garden itself. “Hush, what will all these men think if they hear you?”
 
“That I am a very lucky man.”
 
Victoria had a hard time of not laughing every time she looked at him after that. That one sentence sounded so modern and unEgyptian. 
 
“Are you going to miss being a priest?” she asked, trying to gain some composure before they reached the banquet. Not quite ready to have to explain why she was laughing, since it all involved nothing less than intervention from the gods.
 
“I will be a mortuary priest now. Providing offerings and prayers to the deceased’s ka, their spirit, for those that are not here to do it. I do not have to be in Thebes, away from you and Adjo, for that. How about the garden painted? I know a painter who does very good work, an entire wall if you wish.”
 
“That sounds very nice.”
 
“Minnakht has a new concubine. I heard her name was Ibon. Tameri is not happy about it, I wouldn’t respond about it if our hostess is present.” He leaned closer, not looking at her. Victoria let her gaze follow his, he was keeping watch on the man who had bothered her. Her husband was too perceptive by far; she hadn’t said a word, but he knew. “Maybe if you taught Tameri a few tricks, Minnakht wouldn’t need a concubine.”
 
Victoria snorted. “You yourself said I am a respected woman by giving you a son. Tameri has no son, no daughter. I cannot teach that, all I know is that a little vinegar on some linen can keep a child from forming.” It had taken two years for Adjo for just that reason. Mayati was all of eighteen when she died, but narrow hips had finally widened with the child that had killed her and sent her spirit loose to be replaced by Victoria’s. Still she had been in no hurry to repeat the process just in case. 
 
“Better than ‘her’ methods,” Khaemhat muttered under his breath. 
 
“Shall we try for another then, now that you will be here all the time?” His mouth had been open to say something, but it closed slowly as the smile started forming. “With one born safely, the threat is less now.”
 
“You just liked the fact you were horny every minute of the day when you carried Adjo,” Khaemhat laughed drawing the attention of the very man Victoria didn’t like the looks of. 
 
“Does he have a wife?”

“Who?” 
 
Victoria rolled her eyes; as he if he didn’t know she was as perceptive as he was. “The man you are watching.”
 
He shook his head. “No, never. Anok Sabé has no land, an orphan; a woman usually likes to know they can be supported or at least have walls.”
 
“Oh, I thought that was why you arranged to marry me. All that land and house my father left me.” 
 
Khaemhat shook his head again. “I believe your father approached mine. You liked the look of me after you caught sight of me out working without any linen to cover me.”
 
Victoria let out a sigh. It was hard to believe that a girl barely starting puberty had been so determined in what she wanted. A fifteen-year-old virgin had looked around as if she was shopping and picked out the best looking, best hung man in sight like he was an animal in the market. “Never let it be said the woman didn’t have good taste.”
 
“Did I never mention my father is a jeweler? All those boxes of jewelry you are decked out in came with me. She saw me out working on a collar of malachite and silver, and I think she wanted the necklace more than me.”
 
For months even if she contemplated touching Khaemhat after the switch, her ex husband had started screaming in her head in remembered torment. Khaemhat probably had told her of his father. A real live voice was enough to keep the imaginary one at bay, but she never could concentrate enough. “The day I heard my husband in my head the first time you spoke of your life, you might have mentioned, I just might not have heard.” 
 
“Would you like to meet him and my mother? I’ll have to come up with some story about why you are willing now, but I’ll think of something.”
 
“They’re still alive and you haven’t seen them in seven years?” Victoria whispered, aghast at the woman he had been arranged to marry.
 
“I have visited them often, they live in Thebes only a few streets from our house there. However, it ended up more like a shopping trip she didn’t have to pay for, the one time she did visit. Came close to ruining them, demanding jewelry other people had already paid for; they did not want to offend her, though. I never mentioned I was going after that. I was so used to going alone, I guess I forgot you are not her.”
 
“I would love to. They have to see Adjo.” Victoria glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Khaemhat, I have a supply of carnelian that isn’t even set. Would it help make up for her greed if I gave it to them as a gift? They could make a great many necklaces to sell with it.” 
 
His head lowered. “I thank the Gods every day you are not her, Victoria,” he said, quietly enough no one could hear him say her name.
 
~
 
The house loomed large on the banks of the Nile. Khaemhat had said once that her grandfather had preferred to make a garden grander than any rather than spend the funds on the house. The house was lavish, but seeing those of their neighbors again, she always realized just how modest Mayati’s relatives had been despite knowing she had as much wealth as any of them did. They lived in a mansion, the neighbors lived in palaces. As Khaemhat helped her off the barge, a slave brought them wreaths of flowers and placed cones of scented fat upon their heads. The heat throughout the night would make it melt, spreading perfume about them. The Cyprinum that the perfumer’s widow had sent was hardly necessary.

Tameri, their neighbor and host, was an energetic woman wearing a collar that outshone everyone in the room, who came to greet them in the entryway, eyeing Victoria up and down. Not the same way that the men had, though. “By the Gods, you look wonderful. You definitely prove nothing has changed.” She leaned closer. “You’ll show up that new concubine that thinks she is so beautiful. She makes all men turn their necks to look at her. One looks at her passing by, this one, the unique one, I heard him say now they all stare at you.”
 
“Things change, Tameri, even me.”
 
“True, they do.” Tameri watched her for a moment. “Your looks may not change but I like you better now that you’ve aged some. There was a time I worried you were trying to steal Minnakht from me, I would have sworn, just because you were bored. Now I would call you friend.” Tameri waved them past as another guest arrived at the door. “Go find my husband, the guests are arriving,” Tameri ordered a servant passing by. 
 
The crush of people in the entryway was immense. Khaemhat kept his hand on her back, using his size to keep her from being jostled; even still she felt person after person bumping into her. Finally, after making it through the doorway, it was like breaking free of restraints as the huge main room opened up before them, leaving more than enough space for all. Whose idea was it again, wearing gold? She could see where it had smeared as people had been forced against her. Of course, there was one handprint distinct over her breast. Even in that madhouse, someone had copped a feel. Entering the main room, Victoria was confronted with white washed walls so that the paintings in brilliant colors showed up, dwarves danced before one group, dancing girls with bodies that just wouldn’t quit before another, while at the far end were the musicians playing for all. The dancers always made Victoria self-conscious. As she looked down at the slight bulge in her stomach, she realized that just about everyone beside the entertainment had stopped. They were staring at her. A topless dancing servant was there with tiger nut sweets as Victoria tried to remove the handprint from view. “I’m getting too old for this,” she muttered, leaving Khaemhat to chuckle in her ear.
 
“You’re all of twenty-two.”
 
“Yeah, inside I’m thirty-two, the inside me is getting too old for this.”
 
“I know what makes you feel young again. After we’ve been seen, let’s sneak out to the courtyard.”
 
The thought alone made her wet. A year away was too damn long. He’d already distracted her four times in a day, more times than they had been together since Adjo was born. “I’m not going to get caught sprawled out in her garden.”
 
“Who said sprawled out? A nice wall behind a large plant, you just have to keep quiet. Hard for you, I know.”
 
The image of being taken up against a wall was enough of an inducement. “After dinner; I’m hungry. Four times never left time to eat as well as get ready,” she muttered just before an old acquaintance greeted them. At least it was someone she had met since she had been around. She actually knew them.
 
~
 
“Mayati!” Kifi called. ‘”I’ve got the latest news, you must come hear.” Kifi and Siamun were their nearest neighbors just across the river. Kifi had been Mayati’s closest friend and Victoria did nothing to change that opinion even if the woman talked her ear off. A little pudgy, the woman nevertheless wore the tightest tunic anyone had seen and more jewels than she could hardly lift. She was surrounded by dates, raisins, and cucumbers already and the main meal hadn’t even been brought out. A servant came and poured Victoria a glass of wine as she found a place. Khaemhat was held up by someone he knew. 
 
Kifi looked ready to jump out of her skin, she was so excited to tell some such secret. “You’ll never guess…”
 
“Our friend Minnakht has a new concubine named Ibon and Tameri is mad as can be.” 
 
Kifi narrowed her eyes. “No, that’s old news. Tameri still hardly speaks to him though. If people hadn’t already been invited to this banquet, she wouldn’t have gone through with it. No, this is something you might actually care about: Satipy is visiting our hosts.” Kifi looked expectantly at her.
 
“So?” 
 
Kifi choked on her wine. “Satipy, the woman that everyone thought Khaemhat would marry until you showed up. She’s here tonight.”
 
The musicians playing harp, lute, and flute were switching to another song and acrobats ran into the room as the dancers moved before a new group. “Again I ask, so?” Victoria tried not to think about the fact she was staring straight at a woman’s crotch only inches from her face as one naked acrobat bent over double in front of her. Sweet are the grapes of Horus, Sweeter the song filled night. The lips of thy beloved are washed with honey, an amorous singer crooned to the music.

Kifi giggled. “You aren’t worried? She lives in Thebes, and Khaemhat has been in Thebes without you to keep watch.”
 
“You might as well ask Khaemhat if he is worried? I have been here without him to keep watch and it is widely known there are many former admirers in the area from before I married.” That was the hardest part of this whole ordeal. She knew that Mayati had been unfaithful, men would come up saying things no man should be saying to a married woman. Not propositions either; reminders of the past. They had stopped slowly though as she looked at them as if she had never seen them before. The sad thing was she had no recourse if it was true. Khaemhat could divorce her or worse if she was unfaithful; if he had been, she could only live with it.
 
“Oh, Mayati, Henet was wishing to speak to you. I saw her go into the kitchen a while ago,” Kifi announced, breaking her out of her thoughts.
 
Khaemhat finally found freedom from his friend and found a place behind Victoria. So close, she could feel the heat coming off him. He pulled her closer so she rested back against his crossed legs. Looking down, she had trouble not laughing. It was a perfect position for him to be able to look down on her breasts thrust up toward the sky. “Enjoying the view?”

“Always,” he rumbled in her ear.
 
“Satipy is here, Khaemhat. I’m sure you wish to go say hello. Have you seen her in Thebes?” Kifi announced sweetly. 
 
“Of course I have. She’s marrying my youngest brother in a month. I was at the celebration feast for the arrangement.” Now Kifi truly did choke, as she had just taken a large swallow of her wine when he said it.
 
“She was never thought of as your future wife?” Victoria asked quietly.
 
“The girl was seven when I married you. Even we Egyptians wed them a little later than that.”
 
“There’s not any woman I can tease you with?” Victoria watched his eyes circle around the room. 
 
“There. The one with the wart on her nose. I kissed her before that was there and it showed up when I was twelve.”
 
Victoria laughed even as she could feel his hand sliding across her chest and settle on a golden breast. Through a robe that concealed nothing, he teased her nipple into a hard peak. “I missed you, I would have rather stayed at home and…” 
 
“Oh look, Tameri’s cooks make the best duck,” Kifi squealed in delight as more servants brought in tray after tray of food. Mounds of vegetables, more birds and fish than Victoria could count and wine enough to float a ship. 
 
In all the activity, Khaemhat’s hand slipped from her breast and under the cushion she had on her lap. Gold was everywhere; it was going to be obvious what he had been doing, but she didn’t care. A year of hardly seeing him had almost killed her. One hand reached for a piece of duck while the other barely teased her. Without warning, he pushed a finger in, and her mouth opened in protest. The damn man just popped the piece of duck into her mouth.
 
“I’m going to kill you when we get home.”
 
It didn’t have the impact she meant it to, not with the scream that filled the house. Another joined it. Khaemhat and several other men jumped to their feet. Victoria caught sight of a servant staggering into the main room, pale as her linen dress. With everyone running the other way, Victoria went over to her.
 
“What happened?” The woman almost collapsed and Victoria got an arm around her, helping her to a bench. She grabbed a glass of wine from a man as he ran past and forced her to drink. “What happened?”
 
“My lord master Minnakht is dead. Stabbed,” the servant whispered before guzzling the entire glass of wine as if it would wash away the sight. Her words in the silent hall seemed loud enough for guests in every corner to hear. Then suddenly the entire hall was in chaos. Several women started whimpering and their husbands took them out of the house to shut them up. Others like Kifi started whispering amongst themselves, most likely certain they knew who had done the deed.
 
“Get out! Get out! Get out!” Tameri screamed, the words echoing off the stone walls. Khaemhat and all the men who had gone to investigate came pouring out of the hall but it was Minnakht’s concubine Ibon who Tameri chased out with a switch. The woman vanished into the night as Tameri sank to the ground in tears. 
 
Kifi struggled to get up and went over to the distraught widow. “There, there, you don’t really think the woman killed your husband, do you?”
 
Tameri turned on her. “Get out. You only want gossip.”
 
Victoria watched Khaemhat whispering to the head servant, arms still full of food for the feast. He may have just quit, but a priest to Osiris knew how to handle a death. The man, an Ethiopian, if Victoria had to guess, handed his tray to another and went to comfort his mistress. Tameri was led away crying, hardly able to walk before the woman who ran the house informed everyone it was time to go home. 
 
“If you would come tomorrow, Khaemhat, I am sure she would welcome your advice on preparing him for burial,” the servant asked quietly.
 
Victoria watched her husband nod. All the lesser servants began to herd everyone out the door they had so recently entered. One girl just stood there in the center of the room, looking confused, until Khaemhat took her arm.
 
“You can’t stay here, Satipy, my brother would never forgive me if I left you in a house where there was a killing.” Khaemhat’s future sister-in-law only nodded faintly. Victoria was sure she was too much in shock to know what was happening.
 
Outside no one seemed to care whose barge they went on; all Victoria knew was that Anok Sabé or any of the other rowers that had brought them were nowhere to be seen now. Foreign faces stared at her. I’m never going to wear nothing again. She didn’t like the looks she was getting. Satipy was a robust girl, not fat or even pudgy like Kifi, stocky maybe best describing her. She sat at the front of the barge, silent, as Khaemhat came back to Victoria. He sat close, but there was nothing playful about it when his mouth neared her ear. 
 
“The knife was still in him. The handle was covered in gold dust and Cyprinum oil.”
 
Victoria gasped and every head turned toward her. “But I never even went in the hall. Tameri knows that,” she muttered under her breath.
 
“With what you’re wearing, I never took my eyes off you the entire time we were there. I know you never went in the hall. I’m saying someone is trying to implicate you.”

Chapter 2
 
Staring at a small statue of a cat with an earring glowing in the faint light of a single lamp as the sun came through the window at dawn, Victoria couldn’t believe that anyone would think she could kill someone. Hell, if she hadn’t killed Neil in all the years he beat her, she certainly wasn’t going to get around to it for a man she hardly knew. Victoria spoke to Tameri quite often, but Minnakht was usually gone, like Khaemhat had been with business at the temple. The last month she hadn’t seen her at all, but with her reaction to the concubine, it was no surprise she didn’t get out much. It was probably why no gossip had reached Victoria about a new woman in the house until the night before.
 
“Why have you never come to visit your parents?”
 
Victoria turned to the door quickly. Satipy stood there looking as fierce as a fourteen-year-old girl could. Failing miserably but she was trying. Hell! What was she supposed to say, she didn’t know they existed because…just hell! 
 
“Satipy, Enehy has been looking for you; she wondered if you could teach her your mother’s recipe for quail. She’s heard me talking of it for so long she just has to know how it’s made.” Khaemhat’s voice boomed through the house, even though he wasn’t speaking in anything more than a normal tone.
 
“Oh, of course.” She rushed off quickly at being needed so importantly.
 
“What are you going to tell them?” Victoria whispered.
 
“The truth, you aren’t the same woman. You changed after you lost our first child, but you weren’t ready to see them until after you had truly given them a grandchild.”
 
Victoria laughed slightly, but then sat up with a bad feeling. This had nothing to do with her. It was Mayati who was being framed, not Victoria. The bad feeling got even worse; she had never told Khaemhat of the men that had come to her wanting… “Khaemhat…”
 
His head turned from the window. “So stern?”
 
Victoria dropped her head unable to look at him. Gently he lifted her chin forcing her to look at him. “Tell me.”
 
Letting out a shaky breath, she rushed it out. “I am guessing that someone is implicating Mayati for the past, not me. Khaemhat, there were men that came up to me, talking of joinings. Hoping for more. Mayati was not faithful to you. What if there were more…” Victoria stopped when his jaw clenched. She was killing the man she loved and she couldn’t stand it. “I’m sorry, Khaemhat. I would have told you before, but it seemed the past. I’m not her.”
 
“There was never any certain proof, but I had suspected for some time. Never thought it would come back to me years later, after that person was gone.”

“You knew? I thought those times you spoke of such things, it was more a joke.”
 
Khaemhat’s eyes closed, Victoria couldn’t help but run a gentle finger over his eyelids. “I was about to renounce her as my wife when she announced she was with child. I wasn’t going to do that to my heir. While she carried him, I do believe she had changed her ways. I have always wondered if she knew I was ready to leave her.” His eyes opened slowly, boring into Victoria. “You think me a fool now? Living with it for so long. This is her house, her estate, her house in Thebes. It remains hers. For me to be willing to go back to my parents’ house…”
 
“The night I woke up and found you in the garden, I thought you were crying.”
 
Khaemhat snorted. “The gods bring back a woman I was ready to renounce. How could I have left after that? Mayati would have claimed the Gods were in her favor, she would not have hidden what happened, wishing to revel in the attention it would give her. I was priest to Osiris, leaving a woman that Osiris himself wished to live. No, just then I was trying my hardest not to hit something at having to pretend I wished her with me still. Never shed a tear, not over her.”
 
“I always thought it was because you loved her so much.”

Khaemhat shook his head slowly. “I was arranged to marry her, but when given the chance, it is you I choose to keep. You are the only one I have ever loved. Standing there worrying as you had Adjo, now I think I might have shed a few tears then, at the thought it might kill this body again.” There were footsteps in the hall and Adjo’s babbling.
 
Victoria just had time to pull on a dress before Adjo was brought in. “He’s been fed, my lady,” Enehy announced. 
 
“Wonderful. How is my little treasure?” Victoria picked up the boy and spun him around. It was a little odd to see him even then. After twenty-eight years as Victoria Bredehorst, to see a small Egyptian boy that was hers still seemed a bit odd. Kind of like a father seeing his kid for the first time and wondering about the milkman if it has red hair. Never having thought she would have kids with Neil, more like making sure she never did, she loved that boy more than she could ever have imagined. It was just odd to see an Egyptian face staring back at her, even her own. Mayati might have spent hours before her mirror, but Victoria hardly ever did except for applying kohl to her eyes. Besides being makeup, it was the natural remedy to help prevent eye disease, she was told. Everything else was easily done without a mirror. 
 
“If this girl’s mother’s quail is any good, should I pay attention as she tells me?” Enehy asked quietly.

Khaemhat laughed, the past forgotten. “She is my brother’s future wife and, yes, her mother’s quail is very good. It would be a good addition to our table. Mayati, why don’t you and Adjo come with me to help Tameri with arrangements? A child about might do her good.”
 
~
 
The scent of all the perfume from the night before still hung in the air as they entered the house once again. Flower wreaths lay strewn on the floor where they had been dropped as the party broke up. 
 
“The het-bird comes, the falcon comes; they are Isis and Nephthys, they come embracing their brother, Osiris... Weep for thy brother, Isis! Weep for thy brother, Nephthys! Weep for thy brother. Isis sits, her arms upon her head; Nephthys has seized the tips of her breasts because of her brother,” Khaemhat said softly as they were shown to see Tameri in the courtyard. It was part of a poem telling of the sisters’ and wife’s grief at the death of the Osiris.
 
“Minnakht prepared an annuity contract. Everything is divided between me and Mkhai, his son with his first wife. It is only his funeral arrangements I need worry about.” The calm shattered and tears slid down her face. “Who would do such a thing? Who would kill my husband?”

Victoria looked over quickly. Tameri held her face in her hands, so there were no glances that spoke of distrust. “There are no clues to who did it?” Adjo crawled over to Tameri and she picked him up. Khaemhat was right, a child could do her some good.
 
At that, Tameri lifted her head. She was a pretty woman, pleasing disposition, slow to nag. “They tell me there was gold on the knife. Gold like you wore, Mayati. How I wished I was you last night, so confident to wear such an outfit. I watched you and Khaemhat so happy with each other while my husband was happy with a concubine. I couldn’t keep my eyes from finding you and you were always there to find. The gold must mean something else.”
 
Victoria let out a breath; it was one thing to know that you didn’t kill someone, another to know that you weren’t suspected. “Is there anyone he fought with?” Four years and that was the first time her old life really came back to her. She used to love mysteries and there she was asking the first question every detective always asked when someone was killed. 
 
“Besides me for him taking a concubine? Not that I know of.” 
 
Victoria had to stop asking more. She could see herself getting caught up in it and start asking things no Egyptian should ever know. “I’ll leave you to discuss arrangements, then.”

Tameri nodded and Victoria went to go look at a very impressive mandrake plant near the house. Inside she could see the servants were finally getting to cleaning up the main room. They were whispering and watching her; no matter what Tameri thought, the servants believed that she had killed him. The servants, the serva…were always in a house, even when the mistress was not. Minnakht hadn’t been one of the men Mayati had slept with, had he? Hell, how could she ever find out without seeming a complete idiot. Oh, yes could you please tell me if I slept with your master, I can’t quite remember. Your mistress thought I might have once but it was all speculation. I want the real dirt. There was a real good way to have everyone think you were crazy. 
 
The thing was Minnakht didn’t seem like Mayati’s type. Those who had spoken to her about the past, while never measuring up to Khaemhat, were certainly good looking men. Minnakht was in his forties, older than many. What had she read in college? The life expectancy was all of thirty-five years of age in ancient Egypt. He was also average looking, not tall, built, or handsome. He was just a man, a man who owned a house three times the size of her own. Damn! Khaemhat himself said he thought Mayati picked him more for the necklace he was working on than himself. Idiot of a woman, a necklace couldn’t do what Khaemhat did to her insides every time he was in sight. Judging a man on his looks as to a possible affair wouldn’t mean anything. Handsome or rich, he need not be both. Minnakht was certainly rich.

Victoria found herself staring at a section of blank wall hidden from view by several large plants. Khaemhat’s suggestion came to mind quickly. They were so ready to make up for a year of absence that night, nothing less than a scream had gotten their attention. Lying down by a fishpond, Victoria let her mind wander back to the night before. Anok Sabé, the oarsman…as much as she would have liked to see him guilty, she knew it was nothing more than her imagining his crimes. He had never laid his hands on a woman in his life for all she knew. Even more, an oarsman wouldn’t have been let in the door with a party going on, he would have stuck out like a sore thumb too. 
 
Of course, the handprint she had been trying to remove after making their way through the entryway. Others were mere smears, a small amount might have rubbed off, but enough to leave noticeable amounts later? No, only one had been hard enough to allow her to be implicated. Until Khaemhat came home, though, she had been planning on wearing something else. It couldn’t have been planned. Someone had to realize it was the perfect way for her to be accused of a crime, no one else dared wear such a thing. If Minnakht had been found later in the party, perhaps after she had needed to use the facilities, she would have had no alibi. But who? Over a hundred people were herded out of the door after he was found. All people they knew, were friends with. Was that the key then? Figure out who had a grudge against both of them, enough to kill Minnakht and enough to see Mayati accused. If that was the case, the list just got longer.
 
~
 
The cook Bent-Aneth had just brought in some bread, meat, and ale for her breakfast when Khaemhat appeared. The man made skirts look good. Running around in just a short linen skirt had seemed odd when she first arrived, but it definitely left nothing to the imagination. Every wonderful inch of him was on view and it was so easy just to reach under and…
 
“Come steady the boat for me.”
 
“Fishing?” she asked trying to take her mind off the thoughts that were just there.
 
He shook his head, a fine head for having it shaved. It was beautiful. “Duck hunting.”
 
The throwing stick looked wicked in his hand. She’d never quite figured out how a jeweler’s son and a priest was so handy with such weapons. “Sure, let me put on something old.” 
 
Khaemhat poled them quietly away and they were out of the reeds quickly. The boat was just a craft of tied together reeds making a sort of platform to stand on, not what anyone would call a true boat, but it floated. 
 
“Why did you truly decide not to be a priest any longer?” Victoria asked.
 
“Iy Mry is now the head priest in power and making things impossible for a few of us who wanted to change things. I would have come more if he had allowed it. Every time I announced I was coming, within a few days I was given an important task that prevented it when other people sat there with nothing to do. She wished me to be a priest for the prestige but I have hardly seen my son more than a few days of his life.”
 
Victoria watched a small crocodile slip into the water farther ahead. “Perhaps that is why she wished you to be one; it kept you away.”
 
Khaemhat looked down at her. “And where do you wish me to be?”
 
Her grin surfaced slowly. “Do you know that with the way you are standing, your clothes let me see all of you?” With a toe, she pulled the linen aside just a little further. As big as her wrist and it was just hang ing there. Her gaze brought it to life, though. “Hmmm I like you just where you are.”
 
“We’ll end up in the water with that crocodile to come eat the part you’re admiring if you keep that up.”
 
“Pity.” With the lack of clothes they wore, she had seen more men than she ever would have imagined to compare. It was a true pity indeed. With her toes, she pulled away the linen from around his waist. “Then I’ll just have to admire you without touching.”
 
Khaemhat shook his head at her, but just kept poling them to the spot they needed to be. The ducks could be heard quacking in the water plants as he picked up his throwing stick. Like all the other times they had done this, Victoria would smack the water, scaring the birds into flight and Khaemhat let the stick fly. With a crooked stick, they snagged the bird from the water and the ebony throwing stick was retrieved. It was all repeated as they came to another group of plants.
 
“Why would anyone kill Minnakht?” Victoria asked as they were headed back with ten birds. 
 
“No clue. He’s always been well liked. Not cruel.”

“Unlike Mayati. There are any number of reasons someone would want to implicate her for the crime.” 
 
A slight splash of water and Khaemhat took a duck and threw it in the water. A crocodile came up out of nowhere and snapped it up in its large jaw. “It’s time we get back.”
 
Victoria’s heart beat in her chest at the thought. She just had to know. “You have no doubts about anything that might come out.”
 
“About you? No. About her, there’s nothing I didn’t already know.”
 
Victoria let out a little breath. 
 
~
 
A mortuary priest still had to work. Khaemhat was gone for the day, placing offerings at tombs down the river while Victoria sat in the garden with the captain of a barge looking to trade. Wine, grain, timber, and flax had always been produced on the estate, lesser grade linen for the estate’s use since they didn’t produce enough for trade or the higher grade that was used in Thebes. But a modern day mind had been at work and now they also had pomegranates. Khaemhat always kidded her that they were aphrodisiacs for the Egyptians and that was her reasoning for picking that crop. He hadn’t said a word since a load of pomegranates usually paid for a good deal of supplies. There wasn’t another grower in a week or more in any direction on the river. They were far to the south of the delta where the large plantations of them were grown. Several might have had a tree in their garden but not enough to trade.
 
“Do you have any pomegranates?” the captain asked.
 
“Some, not enough for an entire load, a quarter perhaps.” Victoria watched the man’s mind start turning.
 
“I have something you might appreciate. I have been further south into Nubia; that is my usual trading route. I am on my way back south again, but I still have frankincense and myrrh. Even a tusk of ivory. Something fresh on the long trip would surely be welcome. I’ve been trying to get some for days.”
 
“Agreed.” The captain rushed off as Memnet-Ra looked at her. Disappointed. “What?”
 
“We have no use for that stuff.”
 
“No, we don’t, but Emuishéré the perfumer’s wife will gladly trade us for unguent which we always seem to be short on. The ivory—I am sure Khaemhat’s father the jeweler can find a use for it.” As Memnet-Ra left, Victoria felt eyes on her, finally finding Enehy half peering around a corner. “Are you always just around the corner listening in?” she announced loud enough for Enehy to hear.
 
Slowly the thin, bony woman who ran the house stepped fully into view. “No, my lady.”
 
“Then what?”
 
“You would truly give that to Menetnashté?”
 
Victoria heard the name mentioned rarely enough she could only guess that was who she meant. “Khaemhat’s father? Shouldn’t a grandfather see his grandson?”
 
Enehy’s jaw set. “You almost ruined my brother with your selfish greed.” That was the first news Victoria had that Enehy was Khaemhat’s aunt. “Are you going to get him to fall in love with you, then go off and do as you did before?”
 
“You’ve never told Khaemhat what you knew?”
 
That shocked her but finally Enehy shook her head faintly.
 
Victoria stared down into the fishpond. “I am truthfully not the same woman I once was. I love my husband and I would never hurt him.”
 
Enehy walked over slowly and stood before her looking her straight in the eyes. “What is Khaemhat’s mother’s name?”
 
“What?” 
 
“Answer my question. Khaemhat isn’t here to interrupt. What is his mother’s name?”
 
Victoria felt her heart stop. “He hasn’t been here to interrupt all year and now you say such a thing.”
 
“I fixed pigeon every day for your meal and you haven’t eaten one in years. You haven’t called me names when Khaemhat isn’t around in years. You couldn’t add the fingers on your hands and now you run this estate better than any man we’ve hired. You used to spend hours before the mirror and now you hardly even care. Vain, selfish, bitch of a woman, and everyday for years I haven’t seen that look in your eye like we are all bugs on the ground to be ignored.”
 
Victoria took a deep breath. “My husband beat me to death, Enehy, the same day that Mayati lost the first child. When I woke up, I was in her body. My Ka, my spirit, was living in another. I could see what she showed me in dreams for the first few months, teaching me what she could of her life. Khaemhat thinks it was to atone for misdeeds in her life so she could try to enter the afterlife. I could not hide it from him. He knew almost the first moment I spoke. He’s known and he’s been helping me hide it ever since. I was free of a man who beat me and he was free of a vain selfish bitch of a woman. I do not ask how it happened, just know that I love my husband and I would never hurt him.”
 
Enehy stared for a moment. “Her name is Irisi. You should probably know that if you are going to speak to them.” Without another word, she started to walk off.
 
“How long has everyone known?” Victoria called after her.
 
Enehy stopped and looked to be staring at a dung beetle on the ground. “Probably the day you asked to be taught how to run the estate. Khaemhat gave reasons, but none of them truly could have been why. They sounded possible to all your friends you played nice with, but to us servants who knew you better, it was easy to know you weren’t the same. You were just too nice.”
 
“How did you get to be your nephew’s servant?” Victoria asked before she could leave.

At that, Enehy smiled. “My husband was steward to the Pharaoh Mentuhotep III. The one thing I know is how to run a household. About a year after they were married, she’d about run the household into the ground, at the same time my husband died. Mayati was the only one who ever treated me as a servant, you’ve never treated me as one. I thank you for that.”
 
Once Victoria had tried to figure out exactly when it was she had found herself. So easy once, she could have just opened a book or even hopped on the internet and typed in the name Mentuhotep III and she could have a time frame anyway. Probably never know the exact year, but close enough. The pyramids were already built and looted even then; she’d seen them gleaming in the sun. Built, Khaemhat had told her, about 500 years before, but even that didn’t help her without that simple little list. She’d given up trying.
 
~
 
It had been years since she had dreamed of the life of Mayati. Ever since she had been hit in the head, when her spirit found her way back to Khaemhat, the dreams had gone. The worst was the one Mayati left her with, of Khaemhat hard within her. Just as she started to feel some relief from the want that flowed through, he would stop but remain there. She had felt him there for days one time. Never moving, just endless arousal; even taking care of the matter herself hadn’t ended it. Hippos loud on the riverbank outside the wall registered faintly in Victoria’s mind. Unable to roll over her eyes finally opened. Thank god it wasn’t the dreams returning, Khaemhat was there smiling down into her face, and it sure as hell wasn’t a phantom lover between her legs. 
 
“You get more out of it if I’m awake.” 
 
His smile faded. “I wanted you where I could control you when you heard.”
 
She didn’t like the tone of his voice at all. “Heard what?” She forced out, the words didn’t want to surface. 
 
“Tameri may know you’re innocent, but even hours down the river and they all think you killed Minnakht.”
 
Victoria tried to sit from the shock, but Khaemhat was unmoving, solid as the stone statues he had reminded her of the first time she saw him. The first time she had seen him, she had contemplated that if he beat her he would do far more damage than Neil ever had. Mayati was smaller and Khaemhat was far larger than Neil. Somehow, at that very moment it wasn’t very comforting to know that she would never move unless he let her up. Controlled her, he had. Victoria breathed in deeply, trying to let go the thought that everyone they dealt with thought her a murderer.

“Enehy knows the truth,” Victoria whispered.
 
“How?”
 
“I forgot to be a bitch to the servants when you weren’t around, I guess. Seems they weren’t going to mention anything because they liked me better. Just happy she was gone. Oh, and I haven’t eaten pigeon. Why didn’t you tell me she was your aunt?”
 
“I thought I did. This isn’t going to work if everyone thinks you murdered Minnakht.”
 
“I think I could figure this out, but it’s going to drag up a lot of bad stuff, I have a feeling. The question is how to do it when I’m the one person that should already know everything I need to know.”
 
“Get some sleep. We’ll figure something out.”
 
She smacked his ass hard. “Get some sleep? After you’ve finished what you’ve started.”
 
Khaemhat chuckled in her ear. “Yes, my love.”

Chapter 3
 
Victoria waited until Khaemhat went with Memnet-Ra to check on an irrigation ditch; they would be gone until after lunch. Finally, she slipped into the kitchen after making sure that Enehy was alone.
 
“I need you to tell me about her, everything. Even if it will hurt Khaemhat, I need to know.”
 
The woman’s head flew up. “Why?”
 
“Because there was gold found on the knife, and while Tameri saw me until Minnakht was found, gossip that I killed him has made it as far as where Khaemhat went yesterday.”
 
Her mouth formed a big O, then Enehy nodded slowly as she stirred a large pot on the fire. ”You think her behavior has something to do with it?” Enehy looked around. “Khaemhat isn’t here?”
 
“No, I waited until he left. Why else would something be found to link me to it? I haven’t done anything to anyone, but she had. If we can’t figure out who did do it, Khaemhat will be thought a fool if he keeps me, if the affairs come out because of all this extra gossip. I already know of Hapi-gefa, Anhuri, and Shushu. They came to me hoping to continue the affairs, but they weren’t there that night.”

“Maat help me, those men are scoundrels if I ever met one.” Enehy implored to the goddess of truth and justice.
 
“You hadn’t heard about them?”
 
“Never!” the old woman hissed. “Several of our neighbors’ husbands are all I know about. Suten Hamu, Baraka, Nebtawi, even Kifi’s husband, Siamun.”
 
Victoria plopped down with a groan. “All four of them were at the banquet. Not Minnakht?”
 
Enehy shook her head. “No, Minnakht actually loved Tameri. It was only he had one child by his first wife, and that was it, that was why he took a concubine. Well, more that he took up with a slave he bought for the purpose and when there was a child, he would have adopted it. I know it hurt Tameri, but the boy is sickly. Minnakht might not have an heir for much longer. Even the physicians in Thebes haven’t been able to rid him of the bad spirits that weaken him.” 
 
Victoria rubbed her face. “Tell me about the others.”
 
“All married men. You know two, I think, and the wives of all four. I think it scared her when she realized that Khaemhat was ready to renounce her. There was never a time that she was missing after she got with child. Damn woman loved men, any man. She was beautiful enough, she could pick rich or handsome and she could get him if she wished. But she picked married ones, it seemed. If she were renounced, she would find a new husband easily, but the news of her adultery would make it hard. All the most ardent gold diggers would be there to pick from after that. Perhaps she loved one of them and he would not renounce his wife. I don’t know, I just know I watched Khaemhat die a little inside each day.”
 
“He told me he had planned to leave her, but do you know why he would have stayed so long?”
 
Enehy sniffed. “The marriage contract, simple enough. Your father made a contract that would protect anything his daughter brought into the marriage. Khaemhat would have had to pay back the dowry and until then he would have had to support her still. That dowry had been spent and then she started picking out every bauble she liked. It was a sizable amount. Khaemhat is the fifth child, the oldest will inherit the jewelry business, the others will stay on there and work, have a home, but nothing of their own. Would you be willing to go back to being an underling when you had run your own estate and become a priest for Osiris? A woman’s offense would have to be next to impossible to live with to leave, I would imagine, and she definitely did her part.”

“I’m surprised Khaemhat didn’t have an affair as well if he knew she was with everyone?”
 
The old woman shrugged. “He might have; there were rumors of a woman around in Thebes when they were there. He was certainly not hurting for admirers. If he did stray, he was better at keeping it quiet, it was just rumor and he dealt with a lot of widows as priest. He might have just been meeting one for arrangements.” Enehy started grinning. “Never a rumor of anyone since you lost the child, though. But then the two of you haven’t exactly been keeping quiet yourselves. You do keep your man happy.”
 
Victoria felt herself blush. She hadn’t in years, but that did it. “There were no other men you knew of?” she asked quickly trying to change the subject. 
 
“I think I would have heard of them, she wasn’t very discreet. Just those. Most ladies don’t listen to their servants’ gossip or they would know of them.” 
 
“Enehy, can you listen to the servants’ gossip? Anything might be important.” 
 
Enehy grinned wide. “Like I don’t already.” Hearing someone coming in the hall, Enehy leaned close to Victoria’s ear. “You’re good for him, girl. He’s always liked being needed. She never needed him, he was just there to look at for her.” 
 
Memnet-Ra’s little daughter appeared at the door. “My lady, there is a woman who is asking for a place to stay. Father wants to know what to tell her.”
 
“What woman?” Enehy asked.
 
“Father never saw her before but she says she’s Minnakht’s concubine Ibon. She’s all muddy, too. Looks like she was sleeping with the hippos.”
 
“Probably was,” Victoria muttered under her breath. “Send her to the house. Go find an old dress of mine for her too, Renisenb.” The girl ran off leaving Enehy staring at her again. “What? Tameri ran her off the moment she found her husband dead. Maybe she saw something.”
 
“The woman is a slave, if you forget. Tameri may have run her off, but she still owns her.”
 
Enehy shook her head slowly as Victoria left the room.
 
~

Victoria had hardly seen the woman; she hadn’t a clue why she would be at her home of all places. As Victoria watched Ibon changing dresses, it was easy to see that Renisenb was not joking about Ibon looking like she had slept with the hippos. She was filthy. She was also beautiful, once the mud was removed. Ibon, the concubine’s name meant ebony and it described her well. She was black as night. Surely from the south. “We’ve never spoken a word. May I ask why you came here?” 
 
The woman jerked around, obviously not knowing she had been watched. “This is the first house I came to.” 
 
Victoria shook her head. “There are several estates between us. Now you’re lying.”
 
Ibon bit her lip. “I heard you helped a man escape several years ago from a master that beat him. I can’t go back.”
 
Gossip truly did get around. Even if the man was hardly a boy of twelve. It was the only time she ever interfered, but he had looked at her with the same eyes she had stared at in her mirror all those years Neil had beaten her. Mostly it was a punishment for a serious offense, but that boy, no, the man, was just a demon. “If you answer some questions for me, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Anything. I just can’t go back. With everyone seeing me chased out of the house, everyone will know who I am. I have nowhere to go,” Ibon replied, whining a bit.
 
“Where are you from?” 
 
Ibon’s eyes narrowed. “What does that have to do with anything?”
 
“Where?”
 
“Nubia.”
 
“Renisenb, go to the dock and bring the captain of the ship to me.” Victoria ordered and the girl ran off in a flash. “He’s preparing to leave as we speak. I need you to answer me now.”
 
Ibon nodded, fear in her eyes.
 
“What happened the night Minnakht was killed?”
 
The woman’s head rose and for the first time looked Victoria in the eyes. “You don’t think I did it?”
 
“I saw you prancing about rubbing it in Tameri’s face that you were sleeping with her husband in the open. And you have no rights; the only way you had anything was as long as he lived. The minute he died, you were left to Tameri alone and we all saw her reaction. I think you are smarter than to kill the man giving you the only protection you had.”
 
The concubine’s back straightened at that; she wasn’t the cowering slave anymore. “Why does it matter to you who killed him?” 
 
“Because everyone but Tameri thinks I did it. They found gold on the handle of the knife.”
 
Ibon took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling. “Where do you want me to start?”
 
“Since I doubt Tameri killed him, tell me from when the first guest arrived.”
 
Ibon laughed at that. “Her kill Minnakht? She worshiped him like a god. A lot like the way that husband of yours worships you. Pleasuring you right there in front of an entire room. Now there is man I wouldn’t mind having own me. Watch that ass of his all day long.”
 
“When the guests started arriving?” Victoria urged, though she couldn’t fault the woman’s observation. It was one fine ass.

Smiling, Ibon leaned back on the mat and took a glass of ale at her side. “That would have been about an hour before you arrived with your husband. Covered in gold dust—I’ll have to remember that one when I want the entire room’s attention. There was some important official from Thebes and his wife. He was the guest of honor. Minnakht spoke with him in private for some time, as some other people who came from farther away arrived. They were seated several mats over from you.”
 
“No idea what they spoke of?” 
 
“His son Mkhai; they finished the arrangements for him to marry their daughter that afternoon. They’d started negotiations about the same time I was bought. I’ve kind of wondered if Minnakht was sick and thinking he would die. Not much other reason for him to marry off his only heir and start trying for a new one with a concubine.”
 
“What if Mkhai was sick?”
 
Ibon’s eyes narrowed. “Hadn’t thought of that. Very possible.”
 
Victoria let her mind wander. “So he spoke to this couple, then what?”
 
“He had come out and greeted the new arrivals, had a glass of wine.” Just noticing it for the first time, Ibon wiped away a spot of dirt from her elbow.
 
“Why did you stop? He went somewhere after that, for Tameri to send someone to look for him when we arrived.”
 
Ibon shrugged her shoulders. “There was a woman I’d not seen before talking to him alone. She didn’t look happy. The minute I walked up she ran off.”
 
Victoria just about screamed; of course, she’d never seen her before. Someone who knew who the woman arguing with Minnakht was would have been too simple. Of course they couldn’t solve this simply, could they?
 
“Minnakht was happy, though, kissed me then and there. His son Mkhai was married, the papers were signed. I guess that was actually what the banquet was being held for, the nuptial banquet. It was to have been announced when everyone arrived. Tameri was happy for once since I arrived, Nebt Sheni Mkhai’s bride is a cousin of hers.” Ibon’s voice trailed off.
 
Victoria followed her gaze to the barge captain. Not in the market, she hadn’t looked very closely at him. He was about the same age as Khaemhat, darker skin probably from being on a barge all his life. Decidedly better looking than Minnakht. The woman might not mind the idea Victoria had in her head. “Did you see anything just before Minnakht was found?” 
 
“Tameri sent me off to tell the servants to bring more wine since people started to arrive. When I got back, people were everywhere.”
 
“And you started playing hostess when it was Tameri’s party, and then the screams started?”
 
“Well yes, the woman who was arguing with him earlier was still there when I left, though, near the entryway. Is that all?”
 
Victoria nodded, but it took a moment for the words to form. Was it really a woman that had felt her up? Was it a woman that had stabbed a man? “Captain, would you care for a translator for your trip south?”
 
“I’ve been to Nubia many times, Mistress. I am with a group of men that have boats beyond each cataract so we can reach all the way to the south.” 
 
Victoria looked straight at the man and winked. “Ibon would like to return home, but she hasn’t funds for the trip.” She saw his mouth open slightly before it closed again, his eyes looking the woman up and down.
 
“If she can leave in the next hour, I have no problem with it. I won’t hold up for her.”
 
Ibon looked over at her. “You’re serious? You’d help me get home?”
 
“That’s the way it looks. I’d go get aboard. You heard him.”
 
Ibon ran toward the door, but at the last moment, she looked over her shoulder at the captain. “I’m very appreciative to men that help me; know any way I can repay you?” Without waiting for an answer, she vanished out the door.
 
“Mistress, I think I owe you a great deal,” the captain announced.
 
Victoria started laughing. “And you with a hold full of pomegranates for aphrodisiacs, what ever shall you find for her to repay you with?”
 
His mouth opened and closed for a moment before the smile grew. “I’m serious.”
 
“Next time you make it this way, I expect a discount.”

“For you I think there will be a special treat next time we meet.”
 
~
 
Walking in to dinner with Adjo, Victoria found Khaemhat and her future sister-in-law Satipy already sat waiting for her. 
 
“Before anyone starts gossiping, I helped Ibon go south back to her home.” Enehy’s back was to her, but Victoria watched her shoulders fall with relief. Enehy hadn’t been looking forward to having to tell Khaemhat. She would have, though. “But only on the condition she told me what happened the night Minnakht was killed.”
 
Khaemhat’s eyes lifted from his plate slowly and he took Adjo from her. “And what did she say?”
 
“That Mkhai was married; it was to be announced that night.”
 
“Tameri mentioned that,” he replied, nodding faintly.
 
“She also mentioned that she saw Minnakht arguing with a woman. Our luck having a witness that had only been around a month, she couldn’t say who it was.”

“Not a man?” Khaemhat’s eyebrows rose slowly. “That changes things.”
 
“You’re actually trying to clear her name!” Satipy cried. 
 
The gasp from Enehy was unmistakable. “Keep your tongue, girl.”
 
“I’ve been told what she did all those years ago, the last time anyone saw her. I’m only here because my host was killed.”
 
“Go.” Khaemhat’s voice was quiet but undeniably firm. “Just go.”
 
Satipy smiled and crossed her arms. “I’m glad you’re seeing reason.”
 
“I meant you,” Khaemhat clarified. The girl’s mouth fell open and she just stared as Enehy pushed her out of the room.
 
Victoria could hardly find her voice. “How am I supposed to go make amends with that reaction? She isn’t even part of the family yet and a kid at that. I’ll be stoned before I ever get a word out of my mouth.”
 
“I’ll tell them.” Enehy announced from the door. “They might think Khaemhat was persuaded with your charms, no one would accuse me of such a thing.”

“Just what are you going to tell them?” Khaemhat asked.
 
Victoria started grinning, though. “Who knows, perhaps you’ve developed a taste for my charms after so many years in my house.” Victoria got a firm shove, even if Enehy was smiling.
 
“The wedding is in a month. I’ll think of something, you just figure out who killed Minnakht so you aren’t ridiculed for having such a wife. No one wants a funerary priest that lives with a murdering whore.”
 
“No, Enehy, let me know how you really think about her,” Victoria muttered as the woman walked out of the room. Adjo crawled up on Victoria’s lap; tired, he rested his head on her chest. Victoria leaned back against a cushion so he was lying down. Already she could see his eyes struggling to stay open as he listened to her heartbeat. 
 
~
 
The messenger arrived just as they were eating breakfast. “Come see Tameri at once.” Now what, was all Victoria could think as she and Khaemhat boarded a small boat to make the journey once again. There was no playful banter this time, they just sat there waiting to hear what disaster befell them this time. When they were hardly at the gate, Tameri came running out.
 
“Thank the gods you are here,” she panted out of breath.
 
“What’s the matter?”
 
“Just look.” Tameri ripped off her wig decorated in turquoise beads. Her hair looked like it had worn away, just gone. But not in any pattern that ever came from age and, considering the woman was all of thirty, not an option. No, it looked like thick liquid had poured over her head. Wherever it touched the hair was gone. This was no accident. Who on earth would want a woman’s hair to fall out?
 
Victoria sat slowly on a rock in the garden. Mayati’s father was a physician of some renown. The only thing, other than clothes and jewelry, she had possessed any knowledge of was medicine. She had almost laughed when he had read her the recipe. Lotus leaves, boiled and steeped in oil or fat.
 
“What’s wrong?” Tameri asked noticing the look on her face.
 
“My father had a recipe for such a curse in his papyrus. Our scribe Hemaka had reread them to me while I was pregnant with Adjo, to see if there was anything that might help that pregnancy end better than the first.”
 
“Yes,” Tameri urged.
 
“A remedy to cause the hair to fall out. To be placed on the head of a hated woman were the words it used exactly. I told most everyone that came to visit.”
 
Tameri sank down nearby, her mouth gaping. “I remember now we all laughed at it. You wondered if it worked better than using a stone to remove the hair on your legs.” 
 
“But when, how?” Khaemhat muttered as Tameri replaced the wig. In mourning, she wouldn’t normally wear it, but not to was unthinkable now. 
 
“No one else has complained of such a thing?” Victoria asked, an idea forming.
 
“The gods help me, none I have heard of.”
 
Victoria chewed on her fingernail for a moment. “I am wondering if your cone of perfume had been switched the night of the banquet.”

Even recalling the night of the murder tears started to slip down her cheeks. “We never imagined that so many would arrive at once. The entry is so big usually but that night even I was knocked down in the rush. It fell off I remember and I had to search around for it. Then was the only time, after I took one from the great pile the servants had made.”
 
It seemed a womanly sort of crime. A hated woman’s hair falling out, but why was Tameri hated? All but the knife itself seemed a woman’s crime as a murder mystery in her old life might have stated. The hair trick required planning, though. Victoria tried not to laugh. What if Tameri was the target all along? Some spiteful little trick, but then the woman argued with Minnakht and murder on the spur of the moment committed as well. Everything just in the right place at the right time.
 
“Tameri, if you are a hated woman like the papyrus labeled it, why?”
 
Tameri let out a wail. “You mean the same person killed Minnakht, too.” Her tears fell freely, face buried in her hands. Khaemhat looked uncomfortable as she bent her covered face into his lap. Several moments passed, the ibises at the river’s edge taking off as a crocodile slipped into the water, keeping Khaemhat’s attention as a woman sobbed in his lap. “I don’t know,” Tameri finally said quietly, her voice husky. “I have no idea why anyone would wish to play such a hateful trick on me or kill my husband.”
 
“What happened that night before he was found? Start with the first guests arriving.”
 
Tameri seemed to realize where her head was and pulled it back quickly. She looked a bit sheepish as she scooted away. “The first guests were Nebt Sheni’s family. They came midday and we were busy signing the marriage contract with Mkhai. Somehow, while in Thebes visiting the physicians, that boy found time to get their daughter with child. Oh, I know it was easy enough, she is my cousin some times removed, the families were thrown together. Everyone says it’s because he’s dying and Minnakht was worried he would have no heir but no, Mkhai forced it himself. He had a tapeworm, the physicians treated it, and he is already recovering his health. Minnakht wanted more heirs, true enough, but the boy is fourteen, his father wasn’t going to push a marriage for a few more years yet.”
 
“And after you all went to the main room to wait for the banquet to start?” Khaemhat asked, not letting Tameri sink into her own thoughts. 
 
Tameri rested her chin on her fist, staring at the river thick with silt from the south; the inundation was starting. For three months, the river would be out of its banks, renewing the land with rich earth for planting. The temperature would soar, too. The hottest time of the year was also the wettest. “I was running about making sure the servants were all prepared. The acrobats were late. But fortunately they were talking outside the gate with several neighbors who came to help me with things.”
 
“Who?” Victoria and Khaemhat asked in unison, both with the same idea. 
 
“The wives Henet, Kifi, Khnumyt, Nefrura. Their husbands were here to drink and stare at the dancers.” Victoria groaned. These were the wives of the four men that Mayati had slept with. 
 
Tameri never noticed, she just kept talking. “I was in the kitchen for some time, making sure the food was prepared properly. My duck is well known; couldn’t have the guests getting anything but the best. When I came back, I took a cone of perfume when the steward announced the first real guest arriving. The servants hadn’t gotten all the wine out yet, so I sent Ibon to go speed them up.”
 
“You never saw Minnakht arguing with a woman?”
 
Tamari’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Who did you speak to?”

Smart woman. “Ibon made it to our house, and we had a barge captain heading to her homeland. She is on her way to Nubia. I made her tell me what she knew first. She didn’t know who the woman was.”
 
Tameri nodded slowly while in thought. “It is good, you are a true friend. I couldn’t stand to look at her in the house every day or listen to others tell me of her news. No, I saw no argument, though, it must have been while I was in the kitchen.” 
 
“Kitchen? Kitchen?” Why did that remind her of something? Victoria straightened. “Kifi had said Henet was looking for me. Kifi had seen her in the kitchen last. If Khaemhat hadn’t come and distracted me, I would have gone to see her. I would have walked right through the hall, and it was only moments before Minnakht was discovered.”
 
Tameri looked perplexed. “Henet?” Her head started shaking back and forth again. “She followed me to the kitchen asking if she could borrow some gold debens. Her wedding contract with Suten Hamu is just horrendous. She might as well pay the man rent to live in her own house. He’ll provide her with so many dresses a year no more, one necklace a year, everything spelled out exactly, no more, no less and if she ever leaves the marriage, she’ll be a pauper. I swear she has to pay him money when she’s destitute without him. Her family has nothing and the plot next to them was for sale. She wanted money to buy it for them. The amount was almost nothing, but Suten Hamu refused. I readily said yes, I have my own money I need not even ask about, and then she complained for the rest of the time. I can absolve her of being the one that argued with Minnakht, but if she killed him, that is another story.”
 
“Sounds like she would rather see Suten Hamu dead,” Khaemhat announced.
 
Tameri laughed faintly. “She would be a free woman if he did die. Her children think the agreement is ridiculous. They would gladly give her more, it is there to go around, but their father brings up the agreement if they ever do and he is in charge until the day he dies.”
 
Why on earth would Mayati ever sleep with such a man? Oh right, she liked men, any man Enehy had said. “There was no else in the house earlier, no one at all?”
 
“With nothing stolen, I don’t see any of the entertainment having done it. People outside the household, other than I have mentioned, no. Well, I should say the four husbands of the four women I mentioned. They were always sitting there on a mat from the moment they arrived, drinking. You can ask any servant I have, they never rose from their seats until they were shoved out the door after my Minnakht was found. Went through a large jar of wine apiece before dinner. They are why there was not enough out when the other guests arrived.”

“Then it’s one of three women that argued with him? Have you heard of any of those three having any business with your husband?” Khaemhat asked.
 
Tameri snorted. “Business or affairs? He had a concubine far more beautiful than any of those three. Why should he have affairs with any of them on top of the fact he was never left wanting in my bed. But business…Minnakht had been in Thebes with Mkhai, seeing him treated. I received a message that he bought a concubine last month while he was there. Our steward never mentioned business while he was gone, and that man records everything. Even if it is one flagon of ale given to the poorest field worker, it is in those records and accounted for. I went through the requests sheets while my husband was gone, there was no business at all for those three. Nor for Henet.”
 
That left personal, and making a woman’s hair fall out was surely personal. Victoria doubted the loss was permanent but just to make sure. “If I remember the texts Hemaka read me, take the beans of the dgm, the castor oil plant, pound it, make it into a paste and steep in oil, then rub it onto your head. That is supposed to make a woman’s hair grow back. I think there are some other remedies, but I will have to have them read to me again.”
 
“Thank you, Mayati. I will surely try it. You will stay for lunch? We are still eating duck left from the banquet.”

Chapter 4
 
For two days, there was nothing, no new clues, just more reports of how far the rumor of her having killed Minnakht had spread. Just two days of sleeping late with a husband she hadn’t seen in almost a year. Life almost felt back to normal, other than the murder being laid at her feet.
 
“No, you can’t go in there.” The words rang through the hall as they lay in bed. They sat up quickly, just in time to see a large man looming at the door. 
 
“Brother, no!” Enehy cried and slipped in the gap to stop him. 
 
Enehy’s brother… oh hell! That meant Khaemhat’s father. There was a marked resemblance between father and son. Both tall, both muscular, both gleaming bald heads. “Seven years I’ve put up with you keeping a wife that has made a fool of you, of us, but a murder as well. That’s it. You’re leaving her now.”
 
Victoria looked down as Khaemhat slipped his fingers into hers. “She never left my sight the day it happened. You’re hearing gossip, nothing more.”
 
The old man growled. “Oh, and the men she’s been sleeping with. You think that never made the gossip either? Men at the Senet house drunk and bragging over sleeping with my son’s wife.”
 
“Recently?” Enehy asked. 
 
Menetnashté’s head turned to her quickly. “When does not matter.”
 
“In this case it does.” Victoria argued, pulling her hand free and facing the man. It was no contest: a six foot four inch man against a five foot four woman. 
 
“Reformed or still a whore, you’re turning my family into a mockery.”
 
Victoria watched his hand rise, in horror. Frozen in place, she knew what was coming, but even seeing the giant hand coming for her, she couldn’t bring herself to move. The memories of Neil killing her filled her head, the blood running over her eyes, the pain everywhere . . . then Menetnashté’s hand stopped, inches from her face. Khaemhat stood there, his hand holding back his own father’s, muscles tense to keep the blow from falling.

“No one strikes her,” he growled. 
 
Menetnashté’s eyes grew wide. “You forbid your own father from his will?”
 
As they stood face to face, Victoria could only collapse, the remembered torment too much to bear in the presence of a new attacker. 
 
Enehy rushed to her side as the tears fell. “You idiot!” she screamed at her brother. “The Gods have been at work. The woman you arranged for him to marry is gone, died in childbirth four years ago. The woman you almost struck was killed four years ago by her husband beating her. When she woke up, she was in Mayati’s body. I heard the screams for months after that; her begging ‘no’ to a man that was not there. If this was Mayati, beat her, I don’t care; but you lay a finger on her now and I will take you before the Pharaoh himself.”
 
Menetnashté’s eyes jerked toward Victoria. “You’re joking?”
 
Enehy sneered at her brother. “I’ve known something was different for years, brother, but I heard her preparing to bring you gifts to make up for the actions of someone else, so you can see your grandson. Finally, I asked and knew why things had changed so much. I was going to come to you myself and prepare the way. Tell you she had changed from the one that brought you to ruin. By the Gods, brother, she loves Khaemhat more than any woman I’ve ever seen could.”
 
“Leave, take Satipy with you and leave.” It was all Khaemhat added before he let go of his father’s hand. He picked Victoria up off the floor and carried her out. The smells of the garden assaulted her nose as they ascended the stairs to the roof. A garden she loved so much, comforting her even in the days when she feared that the change wasn’t permanent. He just held her as the hate for the past finally came out.
 
~
 
The priests were to be at Tameri’s to take away her husband’s body. Khaemhat was there helping her with the details. Victoria sat on the roof with Hemaka as he read out the accounts for the estate. The tally of measures of timber, pomegranates, wine, flax, and grain were the last thing on her mind, though. The entire country must think her a murderer by now, her father-in-law hated her and poisoned all of Khaemhat’s family against her. 
 
“Hemaka, leave us.”
 
Victoria’s eyes closed. Menetnashté wasn’t supposed to be there. The scribe stayed at her side. Did he know what had happened the night before?
 
Menetnashté sat on the other side of the flat roof. “I’m sure Khaemhat told you to make sure she was protected. I will not lay a finger on her. Leave us.” 
 
Victoria watched him closely. There was none of the hateful eyes she saw the night before. Finally, she nodded her head and Hemaka vanished down the stairs. 
 
“I forced Khaemhat to marry her; to see her making a fool of him because of me…and he refused to renounce her.” 
 
“Had he told you he was going to leave her?”
 
It took time before it happened, but Menetnashté‘s head finally nodded. “The next time I saw him, he told me of the coming child and that he had changed his mind. Then the child died and nothing was ever mentioned, I just had to keep hearing men bragging of sleeping with her in front of everyone I knew. I just had to keep watching, waiting for when I heard more stories and when I did, it was that she committed murder.”
 
Victoria stared for a moment. There was nothing else to do. She was seeing a man who watched a woman destroy almost everything he knew because of his decision. The hand that almost struck her wasn’t Neil’s blind rage over nothing. Neil believed she had cheated on him, and she was beaten for it. Menetnashté knew Mayati had cheated on his son, knew she had brought him to ruin because of her greed. The idea of murder was too much for his pride when she had taken so much already. “You believed what you were told yesterday very easily.”
 
He smiled the same slight smile that his son did. “Enehy showed me the ivory and carnelian that you were preparing to present us. Never in a thousand inundations would Mayati ever have done such a thing. I could believe she might have stopped sleeping with other men, but to give up jewels, never. Life has been very hard for us since she came into our lives. Khaemhat helps when he can, but it is so much that we had to go into debt to buy new stock in order to complete the pieces we were already paid to complete. I could never see her gladly giving up the very thing.”
 
“Enehy!” Victoria called. “I think its time Adjo meets his grandfather.”
 
“Thank you.” 
 
Victoria swore a tear was sliding down his face.

Victoria sat staring at her jewelry box, piles of gold, electrum, and stones of every sort, even more precious than gold and silver. More than any woman could ever use. Then she felt Khaemhat’s hand glide along her spine.
 
“Is it my old wife come back? You don’t spend this much time choosing jewelry when we have somewhere to go.” 
 
“How many people does your father support?” 
 
“Of six sons, I am the only one who has married away from the house. Their wives, and children. Perhaps thirty in all plus servants.”
 
“Which ones did she take without paying for?”
 
Khaemhat lifted her head forcing her to look at him. “Did my father threaten you again?”
 
“I won’t say he apologized, but he blames himself for the mess you had with her since he arranged the marriage. It scared me last night, but he thought he was protecting everything he held dear. We have more than enough, I don’t need to keep thirty people struggling. I don’t need to keep the family of the man I love struggling over greed.” His hands slid seamlessly to her front, holding her. At once her arousal grew, and yet he was doing nothing to cause it. He didn’t have to say the words; she already knew he was glad she was there and not the woman he was truly married to.
 
“Master Siamun and Kifi are here,” Bent-Aneth the cook announced.
 
“You invited her here?” Khaemhat asked quietly.
 
“No. She’s probably here to tell me the gossip about myself as if no one else could tell me such things.”
 
“Bring some wine and lunch to the courtyard, Bent-Aneth, we’ll be there shortly. How about pigeon today?” Khaemhat ordered.
 
“You little…” He stood there with his arms crossed, he might have been a statue in stone except for the grin. The devil coming to have you for lunch grin that drove her crazy. Victoria tried to force back the thoughts of that grin coming up between her legs just before his tongue…
 
“Haven’t even tried it.”

“It’s… We… Those birds shit on statues where I’m from. Do I not eat everything else?”
 
“Hmmm you do very nicely,” he whispered in her ear. 
 
“You’re not helping things here. We have guests.”
 
That grin again. “Try the pigeon and I’ll do anything you wish if you don’t like it.”
 
Victoria laughed out loud. “That’s just an invitation for me to lie.”
 
With an eyebrow raised Khaemhat pushed her back on the bench. His tongue flicked each nipple until hard. His fingers teasing lightly between her legs until she felt the wetness form, her belly throbbed with want. Then he walked out of the room. “I’ll finish if you try it,” he called back.
 
Damn the man!
 
~
 
Sitting there listening to Kifi babble was almost torture as Khaemhat grinned at her. Every damn grin brought the throbbing back. Every damn grin and she could picture nothing else but him taking her in front of her neighbors if need be, but it had to be soon.
 
“So what have you heard about this murder of Minnakht?” Kifi asked as Khaemhat settled near her husband, Siamun. 
 
Victoria just about choked on her wine. The woman didn’t know Mayati had slept with her own husband. Looking between her and her husband, Victoria finally knew why Siamun had always stared whenever they were together. He’d had Mayati in bed and was forced to sit there through idle gossip, imagining it all again. Observing Kifi as she drank her wine after her question, as though she knew all about the murder. No, she was fishing for new information. The gossip had to have told of Khaemhat helping with the preparations for Minnakht’s burial and Victoria had visited with him several times. “Nothing much. His concubine Ibon has fled to the south, they say.”
 
“That is her home, it makes sense,” Kifi added.
 
Somehow, though, Victoria couldn’t make herself tell some of the details. She was staring at the wife of one of the men that Mayati had slept with. If anyone wanted revenge it would be one of them. Henet, Kifi, Khnumyt, Nefrura; Tameri had cleared Henet of arguing with Minnakht. But the other three???
 
“That’s all you know?”

“Oh yes, Mkhai is married. The banquet was to have announced the union. An important official from Thebes. The boy evidently dallied with his daughter. She is expecting their first child.”
 
“So soon?”
 
“That’s why the wedding was done so quickly.”
 
Kifi laughed. “What irony, the man took a concubine to get another heir and his sickly heir gets one before he does.”
 
Gossip. She hated it before she switched bodies and now it was the only source of news she had. “It was a tapeworm. He’s putting weight back on even as we speak. I never had a chance to speak to Khnumyt and Nefrura at the banquet. Have you heard any news of them?” Victoria hated to admit she was hoping to hear that one of them was having an affair with Minnakht. Despite all the talk he was faithful, other than the concubine, that was the only business Victoria could imagine the women might have had with the dead man.
 
“Nefrura was visiting Tameri when I was there yesterday,” Khaemhat said, breaking out of his conversation with Siamun and grinning at her. “She is expecting another child.”

“Another! The woman already has seven,” Kifi condemned.
 
“Her husband is wealthy enough to support them all. What does it matter?” Siamun argued. 
 
“Pigeon, lunch is served,” Bent-Aneth announced bringing out dishes of food. “Menetnashté will bring Adjo in a few moments to join you.”
 
Kifi stared at her for a moment, eyes narrowing more each moment. “I thought you said you would never welcome that man in your home.”
 
“My family does not live, should I deprive my son of half his family. I hardly remember why I said such a thing.”
 
Kifi snorted. “He refused to give you a necklace you admired.” 
 
“I’m not a child anymore. I was only fourteen then, will you hold a girl’s foolish actions against her for her entire life?” Annoyed, Victoria took a serving of food that Bent-Aneth handed her. She put the food in her mouth without even thinking of the promise Khaemhat had made. A fourteen-year-old girl, no wonder Mayati had been such a slut. When she was fourteen, Victoria’s head was turned every week to a new boy. Crushes all, never forced to marry a man. What scared her most was that fourteen was old here, she’d found out. Girls twelve and thirteen were married off. But then if they only lived to thirty-five on average… There wasn’t much time for sitting around waiting for Mr. Right. Divorce was common, very common. No stigma attached to it, just in Khaemhat’s case a poor man married to a wealthy woman, paying back the dowry, which was the only requirement, became near impossible. A giggling, silly, vain, fourteen-year-old pretending to be a grownup. That was all it was to Mayati, a game. With a father who had given her everything, had she even realized that the jewelry she demanded from her father in law would send them into debt? She never ran a house, a woman did that for her, and even then Enehy had to come and save the day because she was running it into the ground, demanding more than the estate could afford.
 
Kifi said nothing as Menetnashté arrived. They ate in silence. Victoria watched Khaemhat whispering in the ear of Memnet-Ra’s daughter. He only grinned over when he caught her gaze. His promise to finish the only reason that Victoria could imagine for his whispered words. What little plan did he have in his head now? A few moments after the girl ran off, Enehy appeared. 
 
“There is a guest to see you both at the gate,” she announced.
 
Khaemhat rose and held out his hand for her to take. He didn’t have to grin for her to know it was all a cover up. She had eaten her pigeon, it was time for him to finish the job he started. He’d never been a cruel man. 
 
Without warning, Khaemhat had her back against the wall as soon as they were out of sight. Strong hands cupped her ass, hell, she could feel his fingers where they joined adding pressure in just the right spot. Victoria let her head fall back against the wall and just enjoyed. There was nothing gentle about it, an attack would describe it better. Hard over and over, there was no chance to think about gossip over a murder. Just then there was nothing but the feel of him taking away the hurt. Victoria had learned this life she was thrust into without warning, but now, years later, what threatened it all? Gossip. Not that she had made a mistake, just idle talk spreading faster, all for it being bad. She buried her mouth in his neck as her cry forced its way out. He knew her body well, time was never an issue. 
 
How would she ever look Kifi in the face again when she asked who it was at the front gate, as Victoria knew she would? God, how would she ever look her father-in-law in the face? That man wasn’t stupid. He’d know the signs.

Chapter 5
 
Khaemhat walked into the dining room after returning from a tomb the next day. Victoria had never seen him looking so dejected.
 
“What is wrong?”
 
“The gossip is getting worse.”
 
“It is gossip, nothing more,” Menetnashté announced.
 
Victoria knew he had to leave soon and disappeared without a word as Khaemhat was being served his dinner. Satipy gaped as she brought in a large wooden chest and set it before Menetnashté. “Which ones caused your problems?”
 
Menetnashté’s head turned to her quickly. “I never meant you had to give them up.”
 
“I do not wear them and to you they are your livelihood. Which ones?”
 
“You don’t remember which ones you took?” Satipy sneered. 
 
Victoria looked down at Menetnashté. “You give all your daughters-in-law a necklace, which do you think would suit her best?”
 
“I…what?” Satipy sputtered.

“You are correct.” Menetnashté smiled. He pulled out necklace after necklace from the jewel box, each going into separate piles. He seemed to know each like it was another child. Balls of amethyst separated by teardrops of gold he finally brought over and placed around Satipy’s neck. “Your future sister has grown up, the child that caused us trouble is gone. It would do you well to follow her example and forget the past.”
 
“But…” 
 
Menetnashté only shook his head and the rest died in her throat.
 
The piles grew, Satipy’s eyes growing wider as she saw all that the chest contained. Finally he pulled out the most magnificent piece of all. Eight bands of stones with golden eagles’ heads to hold the cords. Teardrops of various sizes in carnelian, turquoise and blue green frit, but not just alone, each teardrop was made up of the three stones inlaid together to make a whole. 
 
“My best work ever.”
 
“Then it should be yours again,” Victoria told him.
 
Menetnashté shook his head slowly as a smile grew. “No, this one is the one I gave you for your wedding.” Satipy’s mouth opened obviously to protest the difference in the necklaces. Menetnashté kept talking without noticing. “I always give based on the dowry that the woman brings to the match. This is your dowry, Mayati, the amount your father provided went to pay for the materials, and I did the finest work I have ever done. That is worth more than your dowry, Satipy. I will not have you complain about this.” Maybe he had seen her look after all. Menetnashté tied the collar around Victoria’s neck, and then started to replace the piles into the chest. Half of the contents remained out. It was no wonder he had gone into debt over her greed. It was no wonder that they couldn’t pay the dowry back, it sat in her chest all along. It would have been coming out of their own coffers if Khaemhat left her. Not a decision to be made lightly. 
 
“Now to just figure out who killed this man and stop the gossip,” Menetnashté added.
 
“You didn’t do it?” Satipy gasped.
 
“Tameri herself saw me all night until he was found, even if you wouldn’t believe my own word that I didn’t do it,” Victoria snapped.
 
Satipy sat there, looking perplexed. 
 
Victoria was starting to wonder if the girl was as bad as Mayati had been, young, self-involved and pigheaded. Satipy had the idea in her head that Mayati was evil and couldn’t get it out. Wait! What had Kifi said? Satipy was a guest of their hosts. Was she remembering something? “What happened before Minnakht was found?” Victoria asked quickly.
 
Satipy turned and looked at her. Her eyes were not showing the hate that was there earlier. Victoria smiled; no, the girl was loyal. She loved Khaemhat’s brother and abhorred the thought that someone was ruining the family name. 
 
“I was helping Nebt Sheni dress. Mkhai’s bride,” she clarified. “They have a house near my family’s. We’ve been friends for years, together whenever they visit Thebes.” 
 
“Did you leave the room at all?”
 
Satipy nodded distractedly. “Nebt Sheni spilt blue pigment on her dress as she was outlining the veins in her breasts. She sent me to Tameri to find out where the rest of her things were stored. Nothing was unpacked yet from the trip, it was all a mess. Everyone kept saying that she was somewhere else. I kept getting sent all over, never to find her.”

“Were you in the main room?” Victoria asked, the words coming out harsher than she meant.
 
Satipy nodded faintly still in thought before she spoke. “My God, my brother, my husband—How sweet it is to go down to the lotus pond and do as you desire—to plunge into the waters, and bathe before you—to let you see my beauty in my tunic of sheerest linen, all wet and clinging and perfumed of balsam.” 
 
“What are you going on about, girl?” Menetnashté demanded, looking as perplexed as the rest of them.
 
Satipy looked like inspiration had struck. “That’s what the woman was saying. I’ve only just remembered the words.”
 
“What?” The three of them asked in unison. Satipy finally lost the distracted look in her eyes and looked between them. 
 
“I wanted to remember it for Nebt Sheni to say to Mkhai after the banquet was over.”
 
“And?” Victoria prompted. 
 
“Then they started arguing so I thought maybe it wasn’t as pretty for her to say anymore.”

Victoria tried not to scream. “Who argued?” 
 
“Minnakht and I don’t know her name.” Victoria felt like screaming. “But she was the one here yesterday, I saw her talking to you at the banquet, too,” Satipy finished.
 
“Kifi!” Khaemhat gasped at the same time as Victoria. 
 
“The short plump one. That’s her, then. She said that little poem and he got angry. Said he loved Tameri. He wouldn’t love her no matter how much she pushed. Said for the hundredth time Tameri was five times more beautiful than she and far less annoying. The woman knows how to keep her mouth shut. I had to hold my mouth to not laugh.”
 
Victoria closed her eyes. The recipe to make one’s hair fall out was just the sort of thing that Kifi would do. She had that already planned so Tameri wouldn’t be so beautiful anymore.
 
Satipy wasn’t done yet though. “Then Minnakht said that even if Tameri couldn’t give him an heir, he had a concubine now to give him one. And if Ibon didn’t, he would find another concubine and another before he would ever love her. It was too sad to listen to. After that I slipped away before they knew I was there. Tears were running down her face; she loved him.”
 
“No, getting rid of the concubine wouldn’t have solved her problem. Minnakht still wouldn’t love her,” Khaemhat muttered.
 
Victoria covered her face with her hands. Kifi probably thought that Mayati sleeping with her husband Siamun had meant he didn’t love her. Well, she was certain he didn’t, but he probably hadn’t before Mayati ever came along. If only Kifi could ever shut up. And there was Mayati, beautiful and only wanting him for sex. She probably wouldn’t have even said a word throughout the whole thing. Glorious silence, was probably all Siamun thought. But that left plump little Kifi sitting there while her best friend had slept with her husband, none too secretly by the sound of it. An insatiable gossip like Kifi would have heard every word the servants had to spread. Victoria let out a groan. An insatiable gossip like Kifi would know exactly who to tell so it made it the length of the Nile in a day for Khaemhat to hear it. Kifi who had told her Henet was looking for her in the kitchen, the only way to get there through the hall where Minnakht was found. If she had gone, she’d have had no defense against the murder accusation.
 
“So what do we do about it? There is no proof that she killed him, just that there was an argument.”

“Nebt Sheni’s father is a judge, and his daughter’s father in law is dead. I don’t think it would be too hard to convince him,” Satipy announced.
 
“First I go tell Siamun about his wife,” Khaemhat said quietly.
 
~
 
The room glowed with the warmth of an enormous alabaster lamp as Victoria came into her bedroom. Enough to see by, it wasn’t bright. Khaemhat lay on the bed, Adjo asleep on his chest. Her husband’s eyes stared at the ceiling, though.
 
“What will they do to her if a case can be made?” Victoria whispered.
 
“Impale her, cut her head off, burn her alive.” Her gasp made Adjo stir. “It is the punishment for every murderer. You wish her to get away with her crime?”
 
“No, it’s just we put people in jail. We don’t chop their heads off, we don’t burn them at the stake.”
 
“Maat, the Egyptian goddess of truth and justice, sitting in judgment over her soul in the Judgment Hall of Osiris, will not judge her well, she will be devoured when her heart is weighed against the feather.”
 
Victoria hmmphed. “Whose heart will be judged when I am gone? The heart in this body is that of a vain, greedy adulterer, or will it be the spirit heart of a woman living out of her own time? You’re a ka priest. Whose ka will come looking to find this body when I am gone?”
 
“Come to bed.”
 
“You won’t answer me?”
 
“I don’t know, you don’t know. I can have every scroll in the temple read to me and I would never know, because this has never happened before. The woman you were is dead. This is a second chance. Why you and not any others? I don’t know.” Khaemhat got up long enough to return Adjo to the nursery. “Come to bed.” 
 
Lying there with his arms around her, Victoria knew that she would never be a true Egyptian. She would never forget twenty-eight years of another life, never forget dying at Neil’s hands. 
 
Khaemhat rolled, pulling her closer. “Do you think I want her back in the Field of Reeds? I had a few things changed in the tomb just in case. She won’t find her way back. The only ka I’m spending eternity with is the one with me right now.”
 
It started small, but her laugh soon filled the room. Trust a priest to Osiris to have a solution to such things. He believed, and that was all that mattered.
 
~
 
Khaemhat was gone from her side when she woke. No, it couldn’t be the sun was high in the sky. She hadn’t slept till almost noon had she? Getting dressed quickly, she rushed out to find Siamun sitting in the courtyard with Khaemhat. Stoic, stone faced, that he hadn’t loved Kifi was evident no matter what emotion Victoria saw there. 
 
“The divorce papers are being drawn up as we speak,” Khaemhat announced quietly.
 
“You still don’t know that she did it? All we know is she had an argument with the dead man.” Then Victoria watched Siamun lower his head.
 
After a while, he began to speak. “She has been acting strangely since the banquet. The only time she has gossiped is the day we came here. I thought she had finally found someone to cheat on me with. She doesn’t love me, I couldn’t see why she would be guilty over the matter. No, with what I was told people saw, she did it.” Khaemhat handed him another glass of wine. “Tameri sent an invitation as well. Nebt Sheni and Mkhai deserve to have a banquet for her wedding. It will be small, but we are invited for tomorrow evening. No gold dust this time, though.”
 
Victoria bit her lip to keep from smiling. “No more of that ever. It’s caused enough trouble.”
 
Siamun let out a sigh. “I am reminded of the story of the king who could cure his blindness if only he could find a faithful woman. He was forever blind.” While Siamun drained his wine cup, Victoria slipped away. He wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up.

Chapter 6
 
The night of the banquet was quite subdued compared to the festive event that ended so badly. The musicians played, one small group of dancers entertained, only a few acrobats cavorted around. There was no great crush of people anywhere, just good friends. Satipy was helping Nebt Sheni get dressed again while the bride’s parents talked with a neighbor. Of all the things to happen, Kifi walked in on Siamun’s arm. No one stopped talking, no one seemed to know but Victoria and Khaemhat and of course Siamun. 
 
“Come, come sit down, Kifi,” Tameri announced grandly. For a moment it looked like she was ready to collapse from the strain, but Mkhai, only her stepson, put an arm around her and helped her to a mat. Wine was soon brought around, and duck on huge platters came from the kitchen. Victoria had sent over a basket full of pomegranates and some wine, knowing that to do it all a second time, supplies were low. While entertainment might have been skimped, there was no shortage of food. Every delicacy the cook knew paraded by.
 
“A toast to the bride and groom,” Nebt Sheni’s father announced, his glass raised high. Everybody drank and then Mkhai stood up.
 
“To my father, who could not be here.” The room was filled with murmurs of agreement as they drank the toast. The food was served as the musicians started playing again, dancers filled the center after the servants had finished presenting everything. Yet again, Victoria tried not to look, her face inches from a woman’s crotch as an acrobat bent double before her. 
 
Tameri stood with a glass of wine forcing everyone to stop eating. “To the one that killed my husband. You aren’t leaving my house alive.” Everyone gasped as she drank fully and sat back down to eat.

Victoria looked between Siamun and Khaemhat. 
 
“There is another way to deal with a crime, leave the criminal at the hands of the one who has been wronged,” Khaemhat whispered in her ear.
 
Victoria gasped. “You told her?” 
 
Khaemhat shook his head. “Siamun, now eat your duck.”
 
“He gave up Kifi, he told on his own wife,” Victoria muttered hidden in her cup. Nebt Sheni’s father, the judge, looked aghast when Victoria looked around.
 
“You can’t take the law into your own hands,” he finally said.
 
The fragile woman who broke into tears a moment before was gone. Tameri set her jaw. “And have you deal with the wrong person? The way the courts are, you would convict the first possible suspect. I’ve heard the gossip but I know that person didn’t do it.”
 
Victoria opened her mouth and closed it quickly. There was gold on the knife but an argument and acting oddly isn’t true evidence in a court at any time in history. There was a gasp from somewhere in the room as someone else realized that no one suspected Mayati anymore. A glass was thrown to the floor and everyone turned to Kifi. Victoria watched the wine slowly spread across the floor. Poisoned?
 
“How could you?” Kifi cried.
 
“Me? You should look at his son, his toast is what will punish you for taking his father. You really should be more careful with what you drink after you’ve killed a man.” The smile on Tameri’s face was merciless. No one present would want to be on the wrong side of Tameri, just then. There was no compassion to be found. 
 
Kifi rushed to her feet and ran for the door. No one followed her out. Several even went back to eating their feast. Victoria wanted to help, but when it came down to it, Kifi had accused her hoping to deal with both of them. Had she hoped to see her impaled, beheaded, or burnt alive? 
 
“Eat, Eat,” Mkhai announced. “My wife wants a festive occasion.” There was a great show of all the glasses being taken away and new ones put out. Yes, definitely poison. New jars of wine were brought out as well. He wasn’t taking any chances of people worrying they might be next. 
 
As the wine started to loosen the mood, talk started up again. The musicians played louder as even more food was brought out. Nebt Sheni got her wish.
 
~
 
Only as the dawn tinged the sky did the events come to mind again. They had been feasting all night, the barges were readied to take people home once more. As they boarded the boats, they saw Kifi’s lifeless body lying on the bank of the river. 
 
Siamun looked over at the corpse. “What do you think?” he asked. “I wonder what poison Mkhai and Tameri used?”
 
“A quick one. She was there when Nefrura had to relieve herself not long after Kifi ran off,” Mayati answered quietly. Quick, it was about all she could expect for leniency in this life she found herself. 

Chapter 7
 
One month later
 
Satipy’s wedding was the next day and Victoria was in Thebes again for the first time since she had left when Adjo’s arrival was imminent. The city on a broad plain split by the Nile and rimmed by mountains was all familiar, as were the streets of the east bank where the living dwelt that she stared at across at the city of the dead. Khaemhat’s world until only a month before. Victoria had never crossed the river. If she had ever studied the Egyptians better she would be able to say where the Pharaohs would be buried centuries before they were ever born. There were some new faces, but she walked through the streets easily, reacquainting herself with the complexes of temples, chapels, stone pharaohs, and obelisks. At least until Khaemhat stopped at an unfamiliar house. Vaguely she recognized it as one of the houses that Mayati had shown her in her dreams years before. Before she could get cold feet though, the door was flung open and they were welcomed inside. People were everywhere, but no one stared, no one whispered. There were smiles at the sight of her.
 
“Mayati!” Menetnashté called from inside, his arms spread wide as he appeared. His smile grew as he pulled away. “I have a present for you.” He disappeared inside for a moment, reappearing quickly. In his hand was a golden amulet, covered with stones. “To protect your ka, the ka we like.” 
 
Victoria let out a sigh as he tied it around her neck. For the first time in years, since her own parents had died, she felt like she had a family. Not an island in the middle of a sea of worry about someone finding out she wasn’t who they thought any more, but a true family. Sometimes it was better not to be who they thought you were.

“You have another grandchild on the way, but we don’t want to tell anyone until later,” Victoria whispered.
 
His smile grew and she felt him squeeze her shoulder as he finished. “You can cook, can’t you? The feast could use some help being prepared.”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Then get your husband and put him to work, too. No sneaking off to the side of the house, either.”
 
No, the man wasn’t stupid.

 
The End

About the Author:
 
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya a few years back I traveled quite a bit, but now I just wish I was. A lot of the places I've written about I've been to, a lot of them I haven't. Rafting on the Nile in Uganda, living in a Montana ghost town, African safaris, European youth hostels, the Black Hills of South Dakota all fill my scrapbooks. Now a daughter takes up most of those pages, but I still travel in my head every time I write.

 
jennifer.mueller@lindenbayromance.com

 

Other works by Jennifer Mueller:
 
History Lessons
 
Ayda Rogers can’t believe her luck! A student of art who has traveled the world, Ayda is independent, intelligent, ambitious…and she’s just been invited to spend the summer in an 800-year-old Scottish castle. The same castle that houses the art collection that is the subject of her doctoral thesis.
 
The striking beauty sets out to focus strictly on finishing her assignment quickly but soon gets lost in the beauty of the land, the history of the castle, and the arms of Hunter Sinclair, the future Duke of Cairnmuir. Hunter, a former RAF officer, is not only gorgeous, he’s generous, kind, and…oh-so-wonderfully-distracting!
 
The past is always present in this captivating story by Jennifer Mueller. The steamy tales of romance between the castle’s former owners and a chivalrous ghost that will haunt your fantasies provide the perfect backdrop for the developing romance between Ayda and Hunter. With three sensational love stories in one, never have History Lessons been quite so alluring.

 

 

 
Egyptian Nights
 
When Victoria Bredehorst, a modern day woman, is killed by her husband she wakes to find her soul has been switched by the gods of Ancient Egypt. Thrown back in time to a strange place she finds herself sharing the body of Mayati, the wife of Khaemhat, one of the priests of Osiris. The normally charismatic and powerful Khaemhat is just as surprised when Mayati opens her eyes. Only hours before he had watched her die in childbirth. Devastated by the loss of his wife and child he had been holding vigil over her whispering prayers and hoping for a miracle. 
 
Khaemhat quickly learns that things aren’t as they appear. Although his wife’s body has returned, her soul remains lost to him. The body he knew so well is now occupied by another woman, a woman he becomes increasingly intrigued by, a woman who is increasingly drawn to him. 
 
Khaemhat is powerful yet tender. He is everything that Victoria’s husband, Neil, was not. Everything that she wished he had been. She is at once flooded by memories of her abusive life with Neil and visions of the life and the bed that Khaemhat shared with Mayati. As time passes and Victoria’s attraction to Khaemhat grows, the past becomes much more real and desirable than the present. 
 
Is Victoria’s life truly over or is it just starting? Jennifer Mueller delivers a unique story in Egyptian Nights. You’ll find yourself transported along with Victoria to the banks of the Nile and a time long past. And, you’ll find yourself believing. Believing that even in death, beginnings can happen.

This is a publication of
 
Linden Bay Romance
 
WWW.LINDENBAYROMANCE.COM

Recommended Linden Bay Romance Read:
 
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With The Not-So-Victorian Viscount Marie Carroll delivers whole-heartedly, taking us on a wondrous journey filled with lush settings, intriguing characters, and unsurpassed passion.