Heretic of the Nile

005

When they hauled Rekhmir out from the depths of the stone well early the next morning, he was smiling. His eyes were gently shut, as if he were just taking another one of his afternoon naps. At peace. Had it not been for the slight bloat of his belly and the abnormally grey tinge on his skin, he might have been mistaken for being asleep. Technically, he was asleep—except it was an eternal slumber from which he would never wake.

The young priest who had the unfortunate good fortune for discovering him was standing stiffly by the side, his thin lips pursed together and his eyes betraying the residual fear that he was trying desperately to hide. Deep down, he was probably praying that they wouldn't throw him out because of this—priests to the gods were expected to maintain a strict level of hygiene and purity, and having come into contact with a dead body was definitely not the best way of doing that.

Three others stood beside him, all looking down at their deceased colleague with a mixture of emotions reflected in their eyes. Sorrow, sympathy, curiosity, fear. Mostly fear. It wasn't every day a priest was found dead in the Great Temple of Ptah. What if it had been one of them instead? They shuddered at the thought of what it would feel like to drown in a dark, watery grave.

The high priest had been summoned, and he arrived shortly after with Mereneith trailing hesitantly behind him.

"Rekhmir!" Mereneith cried out, pushing past the high priest and kneeling by her mentor's side the moment she saw him lying there on top of the white linen sheet that had been spread on the ground. When Tjethy had appeared at the top of the stairway leading to her underground room telling her that Rekhmir had met with "an accident", she had thought it was simply a bad fall—a broken arm or leg perhaps, or even a hard bump on the head in the worst-case scenario. She had not expected to see him lying here, cold and silent, like one of those stone statues they made offerings to every morning.

She slowly raised her right index finger to his nose and then she collapsed to the ground, tears welling up in her eyes.

"What happened here?" Tjethy asked, looking at the group of frightened priests.

Everyone looked towards the pitiful young priest, whose name was Rawer.

"I-I-I came to the well to draw water for the kitchens at daybreak, a-a-and when I tossed the bucket in, I felt it hit something down in the well," Rawer stammered, eyes darting furtively back and forth. The bucket in question was lying haplessly by the side of the well. "I couldn't see what was down there, so I called Sabu," he looked at the rotund priest standing beside him, "and we tried to fish out the object using some wooden poles."

A box or barrel, or a cat or bird that had fallen in perhaps—it wouldn't be the first time that had happened—but never in their lives would they imagine that they'd ever be fishing out a human corpse. When they caught the first glimpse of Rekhmir's smiling face greeting them, Rawer had been so traumatised that he let go of the wooden pole. The body went tumbling back down, landing at the bottom of the well with a loud splash. The quick-thinking Sabu immediately went in search of reinforcements.

Tjethy squatted down beside the body, first lifting Rekhmir's eyelids and then flipping his arm around. "It looks like he's been down there for at least four to five hours," he said calmly. Unlike the other petrified priests, Tjethy had kept his composure, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that he was examining a dead body. "When was the last time Rekhmir was seen alive?" he asked.

The priests exchanged glances with one another.

"I walked with him back to the priests' quarters last night at approximately the eleventh hour," Mereneith said. She wiped the tears off her cheeks, recalling how Rekhmir had smiled and patted her on the head when they parted ways just hours before. He would never be able to do that again.