A strange death - death unheralded, with no warning signs.
This, she thought, is how the old die...
And then a surer conviction came to her. This was not natural death!
This was the enemy striking out of the darkness.
Poison... But how?
When?
All she had eaten, all she had drunk - tested, secured - there had been no loophole of error.
Then how?
When?
With her last feeble flickers of intelligence, Esa sought to penetrate the mystery.
She must know - she must - before she died.
She felt the pressure increasing on her heart - the deadly coldness - the slow painful indrawing of her breath.
How had the enemy done this thing?
And suddenly, from the past, a fleeting memory came to aid her understanding.
The shaven skin of a lamb - a lump of smelling grease - an experiment of her father's - to show that some poisons could be absorbed by the skin. Wool fat - unguents made of wool fat.
That was how the enemy had reached her.
Her pot of sweet-smelling unguent, so necessary to an Egyptian woman.
The poison had been in that...
And tomorrow - Hori - he would not know - she could not tell him... It was too late.
In the morning a frightened little slave girl went running through the house crying out that her lady had died in her sleep.
II
Imhotep stood looking down on Esa's dead body.
His face was sorrowful, but not suspicious.
His mother, he said, had died naturally enough of old age.
"She was old," he said.
"Yes, she was old.
It was doubtless time for her to go to Osiris, and all our troubles and sorrows have hastened the end.
But it seems to have come peacefully enough.
Thank Re in his mercy that here is a death unaided by man or by evil spirit.
There is no violence here.
See how peaceful she looks."
Renisenb wept and Yahmose comforted her.
Henet went about sighing and shaking her head, and saying what a loss Esa would be and how devoted she, Henet, had always been to her.
Kameni checked his singing and showed a proper mourning face.
Hori came and stood looking down at the dead woman.
It was the hour of her summons to him.
He wondered what, exactly, she had meant to say.
She had had something definite to tell him.
Now he would never know.
But he thought, perhaps, that he could guess...
Chapter 21 SECOND MONTH OF SUMMER, 16TH DAY
"Hori - was she killed?"
"I think so, Renisenb."
"How?"
"I do not know."
"But she was so careful."
The girl's voice was distressed and bewildered.
"She was always on the watch.
She took every precaution.
Everything she ate and drank was proved and tested."