When two young women in ancient Egypt open a medical dispensary, they don’t expect their first patient to be a dying florist of Amen whose last words are totally mysterious. It’s Neferet and Bener-ib’s nature to want to appease the ba of the murder victim by finding his killer, and their teenaged apprentice is a born detective. But between the skepticism of their own families and the malice of a rival healer, they find out the simple desire to do the right thing gets them into more trouble than they could have imagined!
When two young women in ancient Egypt open a medical dispensary, they don’t expect their first patient to be a dying florist of Amen whose last words are totally mysterious. It’s Neferet and Bener-ib’s nature to want to appease the ba of the murder victim by finding his killer, and their teenaged apprentice is a born detective. But between the skepticism of their own families and the malice of a rival healer, they find out the simple desire to do the right thing gets them into more trouble than they could have imagined!
CHAPTER 1
After one last look up and down the street, Neferet finally pulled the gate shut and slid the heavy bolt. She heaved a dispirited sigh. The woman of her heart, her fellow sunet, Bener-ib, stood in the doorway of the little dispensary.
“Either this is the healthiest neighborhood in the Two Lands, or people just aren’t coming to us when they need a doctor,” Neferet said.
“Where are all the patients who used to go to that Khuit for healing? She was mostly just a witch, but look at all the people who turned to her for help,” said Bener-ib disconsolately.
“It’s because we’re women.” Neferet leaned against the gate.
“Khuit was a woman.”
“It’s because we’re young women. Nobody can believe a couple of girls have any wisdom.” Neferet clenched her teeth and thrust out her lip, an all-too-familiar anger rising in her. “People don’t seem to care that we were the royal physicians for Akhet-khepru-ra. We’re literate. We may be young, but we know all anybody has ever learned about medicine because we can read.”
Bener-ib nodded. “Should we give up and go back to helping Lady Djefat-nebty?” she asked in a small voice.
Neferet wasn’t so quick to accept defeat. “Never. We can make Lord Ptah-mes’s servants come to us and Papa’s too. And Uncle Pipi’s and Aha’s and Pa-kiki’s and Sati and Maya’s and—”
“They already do. They’re just not sick very often.” Bener-ib, a tiny, bird-boned person with a big head of slender braids, wilted with discouragement.
Here was their insurmountable problem. Two young women from good families who had studied medicine since their earliest adolescence under the greatest woman doctor alive—the physician of the Royal Ornaments—had given up a lucrative and prestigious post at the palace to serve the residents of this modest working-class neighborhood of Waset. But people were always asking why, as if they thought it betrayed some dishonesty on the part of the two well-meaning women. Neferet had always had the unconventional notion that even the poorest workmen should be well cared for, as her parents’ own family servants were. It embarrassed her—pained her—to see ordinary people dragging through life with unset fractures and flyblown eyelids. Their lives were hard enough without all that. Besides, her honest, straightforward nature had been painfully constrained in the stifling atmosphere of court etiquette.
So here they finally were, full of idealism and the desire to do good. And nobody came to them. Not even the clients of the ancient healer who had inhabited their little dispensary before them. It made Neferet angry just to think of it.
She let out a breath through her nose like a blast of steam. “We’re not babies. We’re twenty-four years old. We’ve been studying for half our lives. There’s no reason for this.”
“It was nice of Lord Ptah-mes to make that tax collector of his come when he had a boil on his neck,” said Bener-ib optimistically.
Ptah-mes was Neferet’s husband—in name, at least. Despite the fact that she was younger than most of his children, the two had agreed to a union that served their mutual convenience. Ptah-mes, a friend of Neferet’s father, was a grieving widower who wanted no more of women. The pro forma marriage kept away his avid suitors. And Neferet had just needed an appearance of respectable matronhood to cloak her relationship with Bener-ib. Lord Ptah-mes—who, since his first wife’s death, had gone by his childhood nickname, Maya—was one of the richest and most blue-blooded personages in the City of the Scepter. He was also the Master of the Double House of Silver and Gold. He could certainly use his influence to steer patients to the two women, but those were people who could afford a good doctor anyway.
Neferet scrunched down her brow in an effort at hard thought. She looked around the courtyard of the little house, all neatly swept, with medicinal herbs planted in beds outlined by whitewashed rocks. Three dogs lay sprawled here and there in the shade of the wall, panting, following her with their eyes as if they would help if they could. A one-eyed cat angled his leg overhead and licked in improbable places.
“We’d better be going,” said Bener-ib after a moment. “The children and their nursemaid will be home by now and wonder where we are.”
“I guess you’re right. It just makes me mad is all.” Neferet checked the animals’ water bowl and squatted to pet the largest dog, who grinned up at her. “You boys guard the house well. All right, Mangler? Cheetah, don’t let any rats get our goose fat.”
The shadows of a long summer evening stretched from house to house as they emerged into the street. Some of the neighbors were sitting on their doorsteps or leaning over the parapets of their roof terraces, enjoying a breath of cooler air while their children, liberated at last from a day of work, ran around and played. They nodded respectfully as the two young doctors passed.
“Evening, Hotep. Evening, Sit-amen,” Neferet called cheerfully.
She knew them all and would have sworn they all liked her. Sit-amen, the dyer’s wife, brought them fried bread treats in honey when she made them for her family. But nobody came for healing.
Neferet saw that one of the children had a stye on his eyelid. “You need to put something on that eye, little man. Tell your mama to bring you to our dispensary, and we’ll get you all fixed up.”
“Yes, Lady Neferet,” said the mother from the doorway.
Neferet knew she wouldn’t come.
The packed-earth streets of the southern capital, with its crowd of walled houses and yards, held in the early-summer afternoon’s heat and radiated it back like an oven at the end of the day. Neferet and Bener-ib were relieved to enter the lofty red-painted gate of Lord Ptah-mes’s villa and find themselves in the cool and beauty of a garden full of color, fresh pools, and soul-tickling scents.
Neferet heard men’s voices in the garden and cried in delight, “It’s Papa!”
She grabbed Bener-ib’s hand and drew the smaller woman after her at a run toward the pavilion sheltered by vines, where her husband received guests in the evening. Ducks scattered before them, squawking indignantly, as the two pelted up the gravel walk toward the stone building with its broad porch and delicate painted columns. Two men sat in comfortable low-backed chairs under its shelter, beer pots and straws before them on a pair of graceful stands. Everything in Ptah-mes’s house was beautiful. At first, Neferet had felt awed by the perfection everywhere. But she wasn’t the sort to stay intimidated long.
Lord Ptah-mes, as usual, was dressed to the same perfection, even in the relaxed privacy of his own home. In his late fifties, he was tall and slim and still strikingly handsome, with chiseled features and heavy-lidded black eyes. But more important, under his rather frosty exterior, he was a good man. He generously permitted Neferet to spend his gold however she liked and had welcomed the army of cast-off or disabled animals she’d collected. And he had opened his home to the six fatherless children she and Bener-ib had taken in after their mother abandoned them.
Not everybody would have done that, the young woman told herself gratefully. They were especially rowdy children.
Beside him sat Hani son of Mery-ra, Neferet’s beloved father. She observed with affection that he was the exact opposite of his friend in appearance—a broad, squat, heavyset man with a square jaw, laughter-crinkled little eyes, and a wide grin that bared the space between his front teeth. Everybody said she was a younger, female version of her papa, which suited her fine, even if—in spite of her name—she wasn’t as beautiful as Mama and her sisters. She was smart like Papa, too, who could speak many languages and write them as well. He was high commissioner of foreign affairs in the north, right below the vizier of the Upper Kingdom, and she loved him more than anything except Bener-ib. But then, she had known Papa all her life—she was his little duckling.
The two men looked up as the women skidded to a halt in the gravel.
“Papa! You’re here!”
“In the flesh and plenty of it, as Grandfather would say,” Hani said with a laugh, extending his arms.
Neferet threw herself on him with such exuberance that a less solid man would have tottered. “Hello, Lord Ptah-mes. Are you eating here tonight, Papa?” She took her seat on her father’s lap.
“No, my duckling. I just dropped in to ask your husband’s opinion on something, and he was kind enough to offer me some of this delicious herbed beer.”
Ptah-mes gave his cool, enigmatic smile.
“Ibet and I have been discussing how to get word of our practice out. Nobody’s coming, and I just can’t believe there aren’t any accidents or diseases in that whole neighborhood.”
“Surely your sister brings her children,” Hani said. Sat-hut-haru and her husband, Maya, lived in Maya’s old family home, a former goldsmith’s workshop just around the corner from the dispensary.
“Unfortunately they’re healthy. I-I mean, fortunately.” Bener-ib grew scarlet. She probably wouldn’t say anything else for the rest of the evening, fearing she had disgraced herself.
“Our families and friends all together won’t keep us very busy. It’s just rotten, the way people won’t give us a chance. They don’t know what they’re missing.”
Papa gave her a squeeze. “Maybe it will just take time.”
“Is there another practitioner in the area?” Lord Ptah-mes asked. “Someone who may be draining off your potential patients?”
“I don’t know.” Neferet shot Bener-ib a curious glance. “Have you heard anything, Ibet?”
The girl shook her head, but then her face lit up. “Oh! I think there is. I’ve heard mention of somebody called Djed-har. I don’t think he’s a real sunu, though.”
“Well, there you go, my duckling. Either work out some division of labor with this Djed-har, as Khuit must have done, or see if you can’t win some of his patients over. Maybe you take the women, and he takes the men.”
At last, some progress. Neferet was ready to charge out and beard this fellow, but it was too late in the day. Perhaps they could negotiate some sort of partnership. The possibilities were a delightful challenge to her ingenuity.
The two young women bade Papa and Ptah-mes good evening and headed off to the nursery to have dinner with the children.
“Let’s go see this Djed-har tomorrow,” Neferet said as they walked. “Maybe he’ll be reasonable.”
Bener-ib looked dubious. “Men aren’t always reasonable.”
“If we can’t charm him, we’ll fight. We’ll win—you’ll see.”
The children had been given permission to take over the rear area of Lord Ptah-mes’s garden, behind the wall that separated the fancy part from the practical part. Under the shade of the huge sycomore figs planted by his ancestors, the younger ones were playing a noisy tug-of-war while the nursemaid looked on in boredom, fanning herself with a trimmed palm frond. Hu-may, the oldest boy, who was about twelve, and his thirteen-year-old sister, Mut-tuy, were hunched over a game of Hounds and Jackals. All at once, the girl gave a howl of frustration and surged to her feet, her face crimson and scowling. Hu-may shrank back and murmured something apologetic, but Mut-tuy stalked away. Then she glanced at the two young women and froze.
“Hello, Mut-tuy,” said Neferet pleasantly. “Have you people eaten yet?”
The girl’s scowl went blank with confusion. No doubt, she’d expected a reprimand. She was getting to be tall and gangling, like her mother, with a thin, pretty face usually disfigured by a glower.
“Uh, no,” she said, almost civil despite herself.
Hu-may said meekly, “Nurse said we’d wait for you and Lady Bener-ib.”
The nurse came hurrying up. “I hope that’s all right, Lady Neferet. Qen and Shu-roy were fighting again on the way home. They ought to go without.”
“Of course, we’ll eat together—Qen and Shu-roy too. We’re a family now.”
Certainly, Neferet, for all her occasionally naughty childhood, had never been deprived of dinner. That kind of punishment seemed barbaric to her, given how convivial family dinners had always been at home. “You can tell cook we’ll eat out here.”
“We’re not a family,” growled Mut-tuy. “You’re not our mother. Neither one of you.”
Neferet and Bener-ib exchanged weary glances. Even after months of effort on their part, the girl wasn’t ready to unbend. The other children had come around, to a large extent. Hu-may, like a little grown-up, was already apprenticed to Maya’s mother as a goldsmith. Mut-tuy was hard as the kernel of a persea fruit, always bristling with resentment at the double tragedy that had struck her real family. Only a few months ago, her old grandfather, the last one left, had gone to join his ancestors. She had to feel thoroughly abandoned.
The servants emerged with tables and stools, and everybody took a seat, with much struggling over who got to sit where.
“Count off, now,” Neferet said loudly. “We don’t play favorites.”
Still giggling, the children began to count off, but three-year-old Tiry only knew one number—hamtau, “three”—so another struggle erupted over who got to be third. The little girl found the chaos hilarious. At last, the children sat two by two at the small folding tables, and the ordeal of passing out food began. Neferet didn’t know what the family had been given to eat, because they didn’t seem to like anything that came their way except the roast duck stuffed with cracked wheat, which they gobbled down like starving animals. Only the baby—placidly seated in the nurse’s lap, sucking his grubby thumb—had no comment.
By the time dinner was over and the youngsters had been marched off to bed, Neferet was exhausted. This happened every day. As soon as they were alone once more, she said to Bener-ib with a deflated sigh, “Do you suppose our mothers had it this hard?”
The girl shook her head. “I was the only child.”
“I suspect Mama had her hands full with Pa-kiki and me. The others were older and pretty well-behaved anyway.”
“We have to keep trying, though, Nef’et. Their father was brutally murdered.” Bener-ib swallowed hard. Her own father had been murdered with equal brutality. “And they think their mother has died too.” Her own mother was dead.
Neferet wrapped a compassionate arm around her friend. Nobody had a tenderer heart than Bener-ib. “Of course, we won’t give up. We’ll get through to Mut-tuy if it’s the last thing we do, right? I swear to you on Mama’s ka.”
⸎
Early the next morning, the two young women set off through a city already warming fast, each leading a small child, the older youngsters trailing them like a line of unruly ducklings, with the nursemaid bringing up the rear, the naked baby in her arms. The inhabitants of the working-class neighborhood already knew them and could time their morning tasks by the noisy procession more regular than any water clock. Neferet tipped her head to the old grandfather who sat in the doorway across the lane from the dispensary and unbolted the gate. The three dogs greeted them with a joyous cacophony of barking.
“Somebody’s ready for breakfast,” she said, patting each furry head in turn. “Hu-may, do you want to see what the butcher has for them today before you head off to work?”
The boy obediently trotted off down the street, while the nurse organized the younger children for games and Mut-tuy slouched around, waiting until the house was opened. The sunets were training her to become a healer—a painful task because she hated being told what to do. But the girl was smart. If she ever stopped resenting their kindness, she would make the young women an able assistant.
Cheetah burst through the cat hole, a mouse dangling from his jaws, as Neferet opened the door of the house.
“Somebody’s doing his job, I see,” she said in cheerful satisfaction.
She had just ushered Bener-ib and Mut-tuy through the opening and released the rolled-up fly mat when wild voices from the street caught her attention. An instant later, someone hammered urgently at the gate.
“Iyah! Open up, Doctor! We have a wounded man here.”
Neferet flew back to the gate and threw it open.
A crowd of men, with a woman at the rear, stood before her. Two of them carried, slung between them, the bloody body of a well-dressed, expensively wigged man.
“Bring him in,” Neferet said with professional calm.
There was a shocking amount of blood. Her heart lurched into her throat. She didn’t care much for his prognosis.
They all hustled across the narrow yard and through the doorway to the rustle of shuffling footsteps, leaving bloody splatters in the dirt. The woman, her hands to her mouth, trailed them uncertainly.
“Are you his wife?” Neferet asked quietly.
She nodded, her eyes full of fear. Kohl was running along her eyelids under the onslaught of tears.
“We’ll do what we can.”
Meanwhile, Bener-ib had cleared a place on the table, and the two servants lowered the victim gingerly. A groan escaped him.
At least he’s still alive. “Mut-tuy, bring us hot water and cloths. We have to be able to see the wound.” But the stench told Neferet that his intestines had been pierced. Somewhere not far away, the Lady of the West was waiting with outstretched arms to receive him.
Goggle-eyed at her first sight of a real patient, Mut-tuy handed Bener-ib the pot of water and cloths, and the sunet began to sop up the blood, which fountained endlessly from the man’s middle.
He moaned restlessly but didn’t appear to have the strength to stir.
“What happened?” Neferet asked, looking around at the crowd of servants and the victim’s wife.
No one spoke. She turned back to the wounded man and wiped his brow with a towel moistened with cool water. Fever had already set in.
One of the men, a burly young fellow as bloody as a butcher, finally said in a trembling voice, “The master had just got out of his litter in front of his gate when a couple of fellows jumped out of the shadows and threw themselves on him. Us who was around, we grabbed the attackers, but they slashed their way free and disappeared. Hati-ah, here, got cut up too.”
“It’s nothing,” Hati-ah insisted. His forearm was covered in blood, apparently his own as well as his master’s.
“Can you do anything?” the woman cried tremulously, clutching at Neferet’s arm.
But Neferet could think of nothing encouraging to say. Her insides had that hollow, leaden feeling that meant the worst was about to happen.
“There’s no point in stitching up the outside,” she said gently. “He’s lost a lot of blood, and they’ve chopped him up pretty seriously inside. As the medical books say, ‘This is not a case I will treat.’”
The woman understood and began to whimper. She reached out a hand to touch her husband’s shoulder but then drew back as if she’d just discovered it was someone else. A gloomy silence fell over the group, broken only by the increasingly weak huff of the patient’s breath. His lips moved feebly, and Bener-ib leaned over his face.
“I think you’d better stand with him, mistress,” Neferet said. “His soul is ready to fly. He might have something to say to you.”
The woman drew closer fearfully. “Sen-em-iah, my brother, I’m here.”
At first, Neferet wondered if she’d misunderstood and the woman was really his sister—although from her age she might have been his daughter—but brother and sister were terms of endearment often used by married people. Everyone stood, hushed, waiting for a final word from the threshold of the other world. Sen-em-iah said nothing. His head lolled finally, and a tiny sibilance of breath escaped him.
They all stared at him expectantly until Neferet said in a quiet tone, “I think he’s passed to the West, mistress.”
She took the patient’s hand and pressed her fingers against the inside of the wrist. No pulse.
The woman stared at Neferet as if she couldn’t believe her. She made no move to wail or tear her hair.
“Who is he? Why might someone have done this?”
Since the wife was frozen, one of the servants answered. “Sen-em-iah son of Nakht is—was—Bearer of Divine Offerings of Amen, mistress. Chief florist of the Hidden One’s temple, like his father before him.”
Yahyah. That explains why he was just coming home at this hour of the morning. Florists work all night, while it’s cooler.
“Who would want to kill a florist?” she asked. “They don’t hurt anybody.”
“Maybe it was just a random attack,” suggested another of the servants. “Maybe they were going to rob the master.”
“Were you all with him when he was attacked?”
“Not me,” said an older man. “I’m the steward. I came out with the mistress of the house when the others yelled. These young fellows are the litter bearers and bodyguards. Yes, they were with him.”
No casual robber would have attacked anybody protected by eight stalwart young men. And Neferet knew what the servants didn’t—the attacker had not just stabbed Sen-em-iah but had ripped viciously. He had aimed to kill.
The steward said, “We brought him all the way here because we didn’t know where else a sunu could be found at this hour of the morning. One of these fellows lives in this neighborhood.”
Bener-ib, who had been listening intently, leaned over Sen-em-iah and drew down his eyelids.
That gesture brought his wife out of her shock, and she began to cry, quietly at first, but soon she was howling, keening, raking at her face with her nails.
“Perhaps mistress would like to go home, notify the children?” suggested the steward, taking her by the elbow. “If we could leave the master here briefly until we can call the servants of Inpu…?” He raised inquiring eyes to the two sunets, one after the other. Already, he was edging the distraught widow toward the door. The block of servants crowded after them.
“Of course,” said Neferet. “Is it all right if we come by later to ask a few questions? We’ll have to report this murder, now that we’re involved, and we’ll need to explain what we see’s been done to the body.”
The steward nodded distractedly over his shoulder, and the entire crowd disappeared through the door. The woman’s wails trailed off as they exited the gate, and soon Neferet, Bener-ib, and Mut-tuy were left staring at one another in silence. The young girl’s eyes were round as plates and scalpel sharp.
Mangler had entered and was lapping blood from the smooth plaster floor, his tail wagging in pleasure at the windfall.
Neferet gave her partner a long significant stare. “Do you realize what this is? Our first murder case.”
“Our first? Will there be more?” Bener-ib said faintly.
“Look at that wound. Somebody wanted to be sure this florist died. Somebody who knew what they were doing. A soldier, maybe. A professional assassin.” Neferet turned to the body of Sen-em-iah, whose eyes had popped open a slit. He seemed to be watching them. “If only he could tell us who did this. I feel sure he knew. But he didn’t have any final words.”
“Oh yes, he did,” said Bener-ib, brightening. “I distinctly heard him say something just before you called his wife over.”
Neferet’s heart stepped up its pace. She seized Bener-ib’s hand. “He did? Quick, Ibet! What did he say? This could be the clue to his murder!”
Bener-ib looked around as if searching for witnesses to support her, then she pronounced firmly in her girlish voice, “He said… he said, ‘Sekhat. Rabbit.’”
Flowers of Evil is set in the era of King Tut and follows the adventures of two well-educated noblewomen as they try to solve the mystery of a flower seller’s death. The storyline is intriguing, and the fact that it is based in a culture I know little about during a period I know even less about makes for good reading.
I had a few reservations, however. First, the book starts with some historical tidbits that could have been explained to the reader during the course of the story, rendering this section unnecessary. Also, there’s a glaring typo in this section (circumscribed rather than circumcised), which immediately caused me to question the wisdom of continuing this book.
Another drawback I found while reading is this book is a sequel to a series of books about the main character’s father, Lord Hani. At times, the story referenced events found in those books but weren’t fully explained in this one, leaving some gaps in the information given to the reader. As this is meant to be the first in the series about Hani’s daughter, it wouldn’t be remiss to review pertinent events more fully.
The final item I found issue with was the character development of Lord Hani’s daughter, Neferet, the woman of her heart, Bener-ib, and the rabble of children the two had adopted. I found Neferet to be a spoiled and obstinate child, much younger in action than her purported age in the story. It’s hard to get into the story if the main character irritates the reader, although I’m sure this annoyingness is subjective, and other readers might disagree. Then, although Neferet and Bener-ib were lovers, there was no depth to their relationship described in the story. And finally, the passel of orphaned children was given no more than a vague mention here and there. I couldn’t tell you any of their names or describe them in any detail.
The previous issue aside, I found the cozy mystery element delightful, making it a wonderfully light and enjoyable read.