by T. L. Higley
And so once again I had nowhere to turn for answers. Unless …
There were others with whom Merit had spent time toward the end. People she seemed to trust.
The People of the One.
I pondered her involvement with the strange sect as I climbed to the plateau to meet with my chief overseers. The winds had calmed today, deadening the sounds above. I climbed in silence.
Perhaps I should go back to the village, to one of their meetings. Afterward, I might find someone to whom Merit expressed fear for her life. Of course, I could not simply walk into their midst. I would need to be escorted by Neferet. Yes, I should see Neferet again and ask. Today, if possible.
“Grand Vizier!” The words were shouted in seeming anger, and I turned, surprised to find that I had reached the meeting stone and that my three men were already there. De’de stood with hands on his hips, his lips tightened in annoyance. His eyes were painted dramatically today, swept upward with green malachite. “Did you not hear me?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I—my mind was occupied.”
De’de cocked his head. “While your mind is occupied, this project is falling apart.”
“What’s falling apart?”
Khons spoke first. “The limestone in Tura has slowed.”
“Tura as well? What is going on?”
Khons shrugged. “We received a message from Ako, and his only explanation was that the stonemasons have encountered a design problem.”
“How close are we to having—”
“Not close enough. Fifty-six thousand stones either here or still in Tura.”
I cursed.
Sen leaned into the conversation. “If the stone haulers here continue at their current pace, the slowdown in Tura won’t make any difference. They’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”
I shielded my eyes from the sun and squinted up at the pyramid. As always, it crawled from its base to its flat top with thousands of laborers. “I don’t understand. Why has worked here slowed?”
A dry gust kicked sand toward us, and Sen coughed before speaking. “As best I can tell, it’s simply a morale problem. The men are tired. We’ve been at it for several years, and the project doesn’t look even half finished. They’re losing their heart for it.”
I pounded my staff into the ground like a hammer. “Don’t the fools realize that in accomplishing one fourth the height, we’ve already placed half the stones? From here, it’s—”
“Perhaps they do not,” Sen said. “But I do not think a lecture on architecture is what they need.”
I turned on Sen. “And what do you think they need?”
The older man lifted his eyebrows at my tone.
I sighed and scratched my head. “I’m sorry. I have many things on my mind. Do you have a suggestion?”
De’de interrupted. “It is not simply a matter of fatigue,” he said. “I hear the murmuring in the village. They are frustrated by all the changes of plans. First, the underground chamber is abandoned, after the best of them spent many months cramped in tiny spaces, chiseling out the bedrock and hauling it up the corridor.” He stroked his chin as though the artificial beard of authority were strapped there. “Now labor is being diverted to the queen’s pyramid. On top of that, they do not think it propitious that the Overseer of Constructions and the Great Wife have both crossed to the west within days of each other.”
“The Scourge of Anubis,” Khons ventured.
I glared at him and he said no more.
“If I may, I have an idea,” Sen said, and I waved a hand at him. “What about a competition? Between work gangs. We could establish targets—a certain number of stones laid per day, for example— and any gang that meets its goal will be given extra rations of food and beer. Or it could be a contest between gangs, as to which works most quickly.”
I glanced at Khons and De’de to solicit their thoughts.
“Could work,” Khons grunted.
De’de shrugged one shoulder. “I suppose it is worth trying. The men do love their rations.”
Sen nodded. “I will set it up. But, Grand Vizier, I’ll need your help in setting benchmarks. I’m not yet familiar enough with the plans.”
I rubbed my eyes, gritty with sand.
It was too much. Supply problems, morale decline, changing plans, and two murders to unravel. How was I supposed to keep it all under control?
When I cleared my eyes and looked up, my brother Ahmose stood at the meeting stone. His head was bare and he wore no makeup. It could mean only one thing.
Our father was dead.
* * *
There are things a son must do, regardless of convenience or expediency. Among these is that one must care for his parents, in life and in death. Though Ahmose would prefer to think that he alone attended to our father, the truth is that my position provided ongoing security for him. And I loved our father.
And so I left Sen to deal with the work gangs and promised Khons that I would see to the problem with the Tura quarry. Questions regarding Merit’s death, questions for Neferet and the People of the One, would have to wait. There was a tomb well south, in Meidum, that required inspecting by the two sons of the man who would be buried there, beside his wife who had preceded him to the fields of the afterlife.
Ahmose and I trudged aboard the barque of Pharaoh himself the next morning. It was gracious of Khufu to insist we take it, and the boat had been brought to the pyramid harbor for us, manned by Khufu’s ten brawny oarsmen.
My brother tossed a parcel into the cabin in the center of the barque and went to stand in the stern, facing east, toward the harbor’s entrance. I loaded my own belongings into the cabin but did not approach Ahmose. We had spoken little since he had informed me that our father had crossed.
The boat was long and narrow, only ten cubits across, with room for the small center cabin and a slot on each side for five oarsmen. The front of the boat jutted far in front of me, however, with its long-horned prow ready to cut through the current as we traveled upriver. The pilot hopped across several minutes later with a nod to me. He was a bulky specimen who looked as though he had spent part of his life at the oars. He grabbed the acacia pole that lay in the hull and moved to the port side near Ahmose.
“How long will it take?” my brother asked. “To Meidum.”
The pilot studied the water, then the sky. “With a favorable wind, we should make it by this time tomorrow. If the wind leaves us …” He shrugged and left his thought unfinished.
We were soon off, through the harbor, down the canal, and out onto the Nile. I had not often traveled the river during the flood season, when the farmers were conscripted to work on the pyramid. The river seemed as wide as the earth today, with palms jutting from the water as though they floated there like overgrown lotus flowers.
Ahmose retreated to the cabin and sat beside me. I did not pretend, even to myself, that the gesture was friendly. There was simply no place else to sit.
I pulled some dried beef from my pouch, tore off a leathery piece, and offered the rest to Ahmose.
“Thank you,” he said. It was a beginning.
The oarsmen worked their rhythm, and the sound of the oars plopping into the water in unison was like a lullaby.
“Do you think we will find it still well kept?” I asked.
He chewed the beef slowly. “Since Sneferu abandoned the Meidum pyramid, and had father build him two more at Saqqara, there is no greater tomb at Meidum than that of our parents. I have made certain that it is well cared for.”
“You have made certain?”
Ahmose snorted and looked at me. “What did you think, Hemi? That we could simply bury our mother there and walk away, with no further thought? It has taken ongoing payments to ensure the preservation of her tomb and chapel. I have seen to it. I know you are busy.”
“Ahmose, I—”
He scratched his forehead, eyes closed. “There is nothing to say, Hemi.”
“Let me speak.”
A heavy sigh was his only response.
“I want to thank you for all you have done for Father. You have been a good son. I am sorry for what I have lacked.”
Ahmose lifted an eyebrow and turned slightly toward me but said nothing.
The boat sliced neatly through the water, and the pilot raised the mast that would help the oarsmen propel us upriver. We sat in silence. The sun burned hot, but the breeze cooled my upturned face and carried the smells of wet earth and marshy water.
The pyramid drifted away behind us, until it was a watery illusion on the edge of the desert. I should have felt anxiety at leaving the project, but instead I felt nothing, and the pressing reality of Father’s death fell on me.
I had neglected him, perhaps. But everything was for him, really. The harbor, the valley temple, the pyramid, the causeway and mortuary temple yet to come. I directed men and raised stone, all to please my father.
And now he had gone to the west, where none of my achievements could reach him. I was wearing myself out to earn rations that would never be distributed. A hopelessness stole over me, a realization that everything I worked for was meaningless. I shoved the thought away with all the strength of will I could marshal.
The day wore on with nothing to mark the time but the passing of villages, like floating islands in the floodplain, with dykes as their roads. Villagers waved as we passed and ran down the canal banks to get a closer look at the royal barque and its passengers.
We slept in snatches in the cabin and awoke in the morning to the grim face of the pilot.
“Dead calm,” he said.
“Now what?”
The pilot moved along the line of men, his hand gripping shoulders as he passed. “We will push on with only the power of the men, but it will be slow going.”
With no wind and the prospect of a lengthened trip, Ahmose and I grew restless and irritable. “Perhaps you should take a turn at the oars!” Ahmose said when I complained about the speed. “Perhaps you could do it better, just as you do everything better.”
Some time later I tried to engage Ahmose in a remembrance of happier times with our father, when we were young boys. He would not be pulled in.
“I do not think you really want to begin reminiscing,” he said in a tone low and threatening.
I retreated to the other side of the boat, and kept to myself. But the gods would not allow us to live in peace on such a tiny piece of wood for two days, and it wasn’t long before we were angry again. Ahmose had tried to pass me on the narrow boat, I got in his way, we collided and lost our balance, and suddenly we were shoving at each other.
The pilot yelled. His warning was like spitting on a bonfire.
Ahmose went down first. I would have walked away, but he used a leg to sweep my feet from under me. I fell on him, and he rolled to pin me under. River water pooled beneath my head and soaked into my clothes.
Ahmose straddled my chest, his hands at my throat.
I welcomed the attack. The years of silent hate and subtle innuendo had eaten at me like worms at a carcass.
“Say it, Ahmose! Say whatever it is you have wanted to say these many years!”
But he would not. By Hathor’s bloody horns, even now, he would not. Instead he pushed off me, left me there in the hull, crossed into the cabin, and shoved the door panel closed.
I did not move for some time. The pilot came and stood over me, perhaps to ensure that I still lived, then moved away.
I studied the solid blue of the sky and considered that one day, perhaps even today, my brother might kill me.
SIXTEEN
The wind increased, the oarsmen pushed forward, and we reached Meidum in the late afternoon of the second day. The lush plains here extended beyond the floodwater, to the foot of Sneferu’s first pyramid.
We disembarked and began the short walk, swigging beer from jugs.
“It must seem small to your eyes,” Ahmose said, “now that you build one so grand.”
I looked ahead at the first true pyramid and steadied my voice. “Those who built before us taught us all we know. We build on their foundation and would achieve nothing without their accomplishments.”
When we were still a slight distance from the pyramid, we reached the twin mastabas, joined at the sides, of Itet and Neferma’at. Together the flat-topped buildings stretched back toward the pyramid, and far to the left and right. A squared doorway opened into each tomb chapel. I had forgotten how large the complex was. In unspoken agreement, we first headed to our father’s chapel.
We found all in order, as Ahmose had said. An aged priest led us through the heavy silence of the meandering passageways. The wall paintings had been completed in vivid color. The underground tomb chamber located at the center of the mastaba was blocked by a slab of granite. Ahmose and I worked together to slide it across while the priest disappeared and returned with a torch. We then descended into the tomb chamber and found more stunning decoration and a sarcophagus ready to receive its guest.
“Send word ahead,” the priest said, “when the seventy days are completed and you approach. We will be ready with mourners and priests.”
“We will bring mourners with us,” Ahmose said. “All of Egypt grieves the loss of Neferma’at.”
“Of course.” The priest bowed his head.
Ahmose gave further instructions about the sacrifices to be made in the tomb chapel, and about the guards to be posted near the mastaba. I let him take the lead, as eldest son and the one who had seen to these details thus far. I moved away, examining the chapel. The smell of river water and sour beer clung to me, and I wished for a bath and perfumes.
When we were satisfied that all would be ready for our father’s arrival, we passed out of the tomb chapel into the sunlight again, squinting. We moved along to the second entrance, into our mother’s tomb chapel.
I had not been here in years. Carved reliefs, filled in with brightly colored pastes, covered the walls of musty chambers from floor to ceiling. It was still a beauty to behold. Strange as it might seem, my mother had loved this chapel as she oversaw its construction and decoration. She had supervised every painting, every relief. Here was the family receiving offerings. Over there my father holding a fresh-killed duck in one hand, smiling in triumph, his greyhound at his side. Servants performing daily tasks and farming the land. We moved along the walls, a testament to our family’s early days. There were reliefs of the gods too. Thoth, my father’s god, and Anubis, finding the heart he weighed to be lighter than Ma’at’s feather.
But then came the inevitable, and we came to an awkward pause in front of my mother’s favorite painted relief. I could still remember her clapping in glee as she showed it to us for the first time. It looked exactly as I remembered.
There on the wall stood two young boys, brothers and best friends, drawing a bird trap shut, a pastime that had occupied much of our youth and brought us unending delight.
We stood apart now, Ahmose and I, separated by years and anger and misunderstandings and resentment, and we gazed upon that painting and remembered.
I reached out and ran my fingers over the reliefs, carved deep into the limestone. I turned to Ahmose, hoping for some sign of the affection he had once felt for me.
He did not take his eyes from the relief.
“I do not think I can remain silent any longer,” he said. “I have held my tongue these many years out of respect for Father. But now he is gone. The truth must be spoken, and confessions to priests are not enough.”
I held my breath, but he turned away.
“Speak then! Tell me!”
He turned back, his expression confused. “I will not speak to you of secrets too long held,” he said. “I will speak to the king. And I will let him deal with you as he sees fit.”
He departed our mother’s chapel, left me staring after him.
* * *
With a favorable wind and the current now aiding us, the return passage of the barque was swift. Yet the time stretched ta
ut like a string threatening to snap, and I could induce Ahmose to speak no more.
We arrived back at the harbor the next morning, and Ahmose jumped from the boat, into the arms of his wife. He departed the harbor without a backward glance.
I was not greeted so warmly. Khons had seen the barque approach and was there glaring at me as I climbed out.
“He says you can come and split rock yourself if you want.”
“Who?”
“Ako, over at Tura. I sent him your message, and that was his word sent back to you. ‘Come and split rock yourself.’”
Hot blood surged in my veins. “I will see to the day’s work, then take a boat across and speak to him myself.”
“Good,” Khons grunted and turned on his heel.
I paused only a moment on the dock, with the water at my back and the pyramid before me. I raised my eyes and took a deep breath. Father was gone, but the work must go on. It was time to think of the future, not the past.
Ahmose’s cryptic warnings be cursed. I would leave my own legacy in stone, and I dared him to try to stop me.
* * *
I needed to see Neferet again.
I found her outside her home toward the end of the day, surrounded by children. She smiled at me over the tops of their heads.
I had not intended to stay for their evening meal, but she insisted. Sen arrived and only nodded in my direction. On the plateau he was congenial. In his home, he seemed wary of me.
He and I spoke of the project, as Neferet moved in and out with foods that delighted every one of the senses. Red beef and greens with pungent leeks. Juicy pomegranates, fleshy and sweet. Sen relaxed a bit, and I forgot my reason for coming and enjoyed the conversation and laughter around the table.
But when the meal had ended, Sen asked, “Did you come for a reason, Grand Vizier?” He glanced at Neferet. “Other than the pleasure of our company?”
I wiped my mouth and nodded. “I am trying to speak to anyone who had contact with the Great Wife in her last days, to learn whether there was any threat to herself or to Mentu-hotep. I was hoping to meet with some of your friends again, perhaps attend another of your gatherings.”