by Mike Ashley
A boy of 11 or 12 years burst through the opening at the top of the stairs and onto the rooftop of the guardhouse, where the police were quartered and prisoners were kept. The youth was sturdy of body and deeply tanned by the sun; his skin was dusted with fine sand and his kilt stained with sweat and dirt. He bent half over, holding his side. Gasping for breath, he said, “You must . . . come . . . right away . . . sir.”
“Go away, Mery.” Hori, the police scribe, a pudgy youth a mere few years older than the boy, waved him away. “Can’t you see we’re busy?”
Bak took one look at Mery’s face, scowled a reprimand. “Silence, Hori.”
Clutching his side, breathing hard, Mery hastened to the pavilion beneath which Bak and Hori sat. “A man’s been . . . slain, sir.”
The shelter, a sturdy affair with a shaggy palm-frond roof, was open on all four sides, allowing the cool early morning breeze to waft through. A quiet, comfortable place to read and write reports before the hot breath of the lord Re reached into the city inside the tall mudbrick walls of the fortress. Painted stark white, towered for strength, the stronghold’s crenellated battlements looked down upon an orderly grid of building blocks, barracks, storehouses, and the walled mansion of the lord Horus of Buhen, the local version of the falcon god. The fortress was the largest and most important in Wawat, a land south of Kemet held close in the heart of Maatkare Hatshepsut because of the gold found in its desert wastes.
Muttering an oath, Bak let the ends of the scroll roll together, tossed it into a basket of similar documents, and scrambled to his feet. “Who is he, Mery?” With a permanent population of slightly more than four hundred people, the question was reasonable. Everyone knew everyone else.
“A foreigner, from the looks of him. A man from far to the north.”
“A stranger, then. A trader.”
The boy shrugged.
“You found him where?” Bak asked, though he could guess easily enough from the brownish yellow dust coating Mery’s skin and clothing.
“We were playing in the old tombs, sir. He’s in one of them.”
Bak summoned his Medjay sergeant Imsiba, a tall, powerfully built man, lithe of gait and sharp of eye. Soon the two of them and Mery were hurrying out of the twin-towered gate, leaving the citadel behind, and striding along the broad, sun-struck thoroughfare that joined the gate behind them to the even larger, desert-facing gate that pierced the massive peripheral wall. Passing the jumble of interconnected houses that formed the outer city, they veered off the street to cross an open stretch of sand to a low shelf of rock that marked the site of an ancient ruined cemetery.
Mounds of rubble and broken mudbrick walls, the tops of low structures built many generations earlier, protruded from sand blown against the face of the shelf. Gaping holes and stairways partially covered with wind-driven grit led to black cavities in the earth. The outer wall of the city loomed over the sandy waste, allowing the sentries on the battlements to look down in idle curiosity.
A half dozen boys close to Mery in age, all as sturdily built as he and as dirty, sat in a cluster on overturned pots and heaps of tumbled bricks. They were the sons of an ever-increasing number of soldiers and scribes who thought the southern frontier safe enough to bring their families. Spotting the newcomers, the boys leaped to their feet and ran to meet them, all chattering at once, the shock of finding a dead man far outweighed by the excitement of discovery.
With Mery leading the way and the rest of the children straggling behind, they walked along the rocky shelf, past broken walls and collapsed roofs, toppled memorial tablets and crushed burial jars, towards a rock-cut stairway enclosed by what looked like a low mudbrick wall of irregular height but which was actually the remains of a vaulted roof. A rectangular black hole at the bottom beckoned.
Imsiba lighted the torch they had brought and they plunged down the dozen rough steps to the low, narrow doorway. Bak ducked down and held the torch inside, examining the walls and ceiling for cracks, the floors for chunks of rock fallen from above, signs that the ceiling was close to collapse. He had suggested more than once that the boys play elsewhere. They had countered by pointing at the sentries atop the walls, who could summon help in an instant.
The tomb was slightly longer than a man was tall, not quite as wide, and barely high enough to stand erect. Chisel marks pocked its rough-cut walls, but it was otherwise unadorned. If a body had been placed inside when newly dug, it had long ago vanished. Now a fresh burial had been made, a casual interment at best.
The fleshy body lay half on its side, arms askew, legs outstretched. The usual smell of hot, dry earth was smothered by the odours of sweat and stale beer, of defecation and the metallic smell of blood. Black hair, held off the man’s face by a white band around his head, would have hung nearly to his shoulders when he stood erect. His dark beard had been cut to a point. He wore a long-sleeved, ankle-length white tunic, with a broad wrap of red-fringed white fabric bound around his ample stomach and hips. His seal ring, the torque around his neck, and the bracelets on both arms were of heavy gold. Their presence hinted at a reason for death other than robbery.
A dagger projected just below his breastbone. Blood had spurted out, staining the tunic but not the dust-covered rock floor beneath him. A clear indication that he had been slain elsewhere and carried into the tomb. Sucking in his breath, doing what he had to do, Bak gripped the hilt and pulled the weapon free. The bronze blade was ordinary. Strips of leather, shiny from wear, had been wound around the handle.
Bak examined the floor of the small space. He found many scuffed footprints, but none distinct enough to recognize later should he come upon them. Glimpsing something whitish in a corner, he scooped it up. A knucklebone. Had the boys tired of playing hide and seek or chasing make-believe tribesmen through the tombs and begun to play games of chance?
Imsiba bent closer and stared at the face. “I’ve seen this man before, my friend. Yesterday evening it was, shortly before nightfall. Entering Nofery’s house of pleasure with three other men.”
“I remember him,” Nofery growled. “How could I forget so vile a man?”
“Who was he?” Bak asked.
The obese old woman, her expression stormy, handed jars of beer to him and the sergeant. “He was called Ben-Azan. A trader. A man from Retenu, so his name proclaimed, but he’d long ago washed away the remnants of his birth and childhood, thinking himself a man of the world.”
Bak settled on one of the dozen or so low stools in the dark, dingy room. Beer vats and baskets piled high with smaller jars lined one wall. A low table held a multitude of drinking bowls, many cracked and chipped. The room reeked of stale beer and sweat, reminding him of the tomb, and a mix of other odours hinting of sex and vomit. Dust motes danced in the slab of light entering through the open doorway. Nofery was his spy, one who enjoyed sly games to gain an advantage. Not this time, he could see.
Imsiba drew a stool close and sat down beside him. “He was passing through Buhen?”
“I thank the lord Amun he had no plans to stay.”
Bak broke the dried mud plug from his jar and, taking care not to stir up the gritty sediment, eyed her curiously while he sipped the bitter brew. She usually turned a blind eye to her customers’ faults. What had Ben-Azan done to antagonize her? “Was he travelling to north or south, did you hear?”
“Who could not have heard?” she said with a sneer. “He was returning to his homeland, well pleased with himself.”
“He’d had a successful trading expedition, I assume.”
“From the way he gloated, he left no doubt of his masterful dealings with those poor, ignorant tribesmen in the land of Kush.”
Poor and ignorant? Bak doubted the words were hers; she must be quoting Ben-Azan. The river running through Kush and Wawat served as a major trade route along which exotic products highly valued by the royal house of Kemet were transported from far to the south. From what he had heard, many Kushite merchants were men of wealth who could out-b
arter the wiliest of traders from Kemet and lands beyond. “Where are his wares, do you know?”
Nofery broke the plug from a beer jar, dropped onto a stool that vanished beneath her sagging flesh, and poured a thin stream of brew into her mouth. Bak exchanged a look of long-suffering silence with Imsiba. He knew from experience that the harder he pushed, the more she resisted.
“He came in with a ship’s captain, Tjay by name, and two other men,” she said. “Traders like him, they were. They’d come north by donkey train, passing down the trail west of the Belly of Stones. Would they not have unloaded the beasts at Kor and reloaded on a vessel bound for Abu?” Abu was the southernmost city in the land of Kemet.
Bak understood her meaning. The Belly of Stones was a long stretch of rapids not navigable much of the year. Merchandise travelling north was transported past the boiling river on the backs of donkeys and unloaded at the small fortress of Kor where the river grew tame. A sensible trader would quickly load his goods onto a northbound ship – such as that of Captain Tjay.
“Who were the other two men?”
She grimaced at a slick-haired yellow dog peering in from the street, but most likely her distaste was directed at the man she held in her memory. “Foreigners, like he was. Friends, he called them.”
“You sound doubtful. Did they quarrel?”
Grudgingly, she shook her head. “They behaved like men on the best of terms.”
Bak was beginning to lose patience. “Tell me, old woman, what exactly did he do to make you dislike him so?”
“He snapped his fingers and beckoned, as if I was beneath contempt, and treated the women who lay with him as vessels in which to take his pleasure. As for those he called friends, he behaved like a man holding court. I expected them at any moment to get down on their knees and kiss his feet.” She screwed up her face in distaste. “Worst of all was the gloating. Smiling expansively, patting his stomach like a man of wealth, bragging of his brilliance as a trader, hinting at some special coup that demonstrated his superiority.”
“He sounds like a man asking to be slain,” Imsiba said.
They hurried to the harbour, praying Captain Tjay had not yet set sail. If he had left with Ban-Azan’s merchandise but without the man himself, he was at best a thief, at worst a slayer.
Their worry proved unfounded. The ship they sought was moored at the near end of one of three long stone quays that reached out into the river. Like many vessels plying the waters between the Belly of Stones and Abu, Captain Tjay’s ship looked to be a veteran of the frontier. The wooden hull was gray with age and scarred, but appeared solid and sturdy. Bak noted several neat patches on the faded reddish sail, laid out across the deck so a sailor could repair a fresh tear.
“Dead?” Tjay, standing on the quay near the end of the gangplank, shook his head. “I don’t believe it. I was with him just last night. We shared a brew – more than one, if the truth be told – and made merry with congenial companions and a few of that old hag Nofery’s women.” He was a man of medium height, with broad shoulders and thick, muscular legs. His skin was dark from years of exposure to sun and wind, his eyes almost yellow.
“He was stabbed in the chest sometime during the night,” Bak said.
“It can’t be true.”
Tjay’s ship, its fittings and stays creaking, rose and fell on the shallow swells. Brownish silt-laden water lapped the quay, carrying close a duck and her cheeping offspring. Farther out, the river flowed smooth and quiet, with each small ripple like bits of silver, reflections of the bright-white sky.
“How late did you leave him to go your own way?” Bak asked, hoping to avert another denial.
Tjay gave him a sharp look. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“He’s even now in the house of death, awaiting the commandant’s decision as to what must be done with his mortal remains.”
“Ah, yes. What does one do with a foreigner whose home was far away and whose burial customs are different than those of Kemet?”
Bak chose not to respond to the obvious. With the days so hot, the dead man would surely be buried without delay. “You’re not grieving, I see.”
“I enjoyed his company, yes, but grieve?” Tjay expelled a humourless little laugh. “I’d never set eyes on the man until two days ago, and not until after midday. When he and his friends came off the desert trail at Kor.”
“They asked you to transport their goods to Abu? Or was Ben-Azan the sole man who wished to hire your ship?”
“The three of them, but Ben-Azan did the talking.” Tjay scratched his chest, matted with thick, dark hair. “He was a thrifty sort. Though darkness was threatening, he wanted their possessions transferred directly from the donkeys to my ship, saving the price of unloading the poor beasts and leaving the objects where they lay, then hiring men to stow them on board the following morning.”
“Such haste must’ve been irksome.”
A hint of irritation touched Tjay’s face, quickly supplanted by a smile. “He was thrifty, lieutenant, but not stingy.”
Bak noted the stifled emotion, the too quick reassurance. “If he’d not showed up after several days – and he wouldn’t have – what would you have done with his wares?”
Tjay did not have to think twice about his answer. “I’d have off-loaded his part of the cargo and taken on board that of someone else. With enough goods on deck to make the journey profitable, I’d have sailed north to Abu.”
“You’d not have reported him missing?”
The captain frowned, clearly resenting the question. “I would have, yes. The documents I obtained at Kor list him and his belongings as being on board. We couldn’t pass through customs at Abu without an accounting, could we?”
Bak chose to ignore the sarcasm. “Tell me of the two traders who travelled with him.”
“Thutnofer and Aper-el.”
“I was told they both are foreigners, yet the one . . .” Bak’s voice tailed off, inviting an explanation.
“Like many another man who’s come from a distant land to make Kemet his home, Thutnofer has taken a name common to his adopted land.”
“Where have the two of them gone?”
“They went out in search of Ben-Azan.”
* * *
“Captain Tjay seemed not to care when you laid claim to Ben-Azan’s merchandise in the name of our sovereign,” Imsiba said.
“The man is dead, his goods forfeit. Tjay’s been sailing long enough to know that.” Bak eyed the mounds of goods lashed to the deck behind the deckhouse, where the objects were sheltered from spraying waters – unlike the merchandise belonging to Thutnofer and Aper-el, which was stowed on the bow. There was barely room for the oarsmen on either side and for a man at the rudder. “Let’s begin at the stern and work our way forwards.”
“Can we not look through these objects in a more leisurely fashion after they’ve been carried into a storehouse?”
Bak called a greeting to two nearly naked fishermen hurrying down the quay, each carrying a long string of silvery fish. Late for the market, they had no time to stop and chat. “We must see all this vessel carries, not merely the wares of Ben-Azan.”
“The customs inspector at Kor approved the shipment and authorized their departure. What do you hope to find that he didn’t?”
“Why was Ben-Azan slain, Imsiba?”
The Medjay sergeant looked at him with narrowing eyes. “What are you thinking, my friend?”
“Would a man of Buhen think to get rid of a body in one of those old tombs?”
Understanding struck and a hint of a smile touched Imsiba’s lips. “All who dwell in this city know of Mery and his friends, of how they play in the cemetery day after day. If you wish to conceal a murder, that’s not the place to leave the victim.”
“Captain Tjay has been here before, but not often. He might know of the tombs, but not of the boys.”
“You believe he slew Ben-Azan?”
Bak knelt before a woven reed chest, bro
ke the seal naming Ben-Azan the owner, and opened the lid, revealing dozens of cloth-wrapped packets. Each gave off the smell of some exotic herb or spice brought from far to the south. “I know only that a man unfamiliar with Buhen left the body in that tomb. A search of this cargo may reveal his name.”
“They say he was found in an empty tomb within the walls of this fortress. How can that be?” Thutnofer had been the first of the two traders to return to the ship, carrying word of Ben-Azan’s death. As always happened on the frontier, any news of note – in this case, the death of a foreigner – had spread faster than sand in a desert storm.
Bak stood up and arched his back, stretching weary muscles. A detailed search of a ship’s cargo could be time-consuming and exhausting. “There’s an ancient cemetery near the outer city. You didn’t know of it?”
“How could I? I’ve been here once before and then for no more than an hour. When we travelled south seven months ago, that was. Ben-Azan urged us to hurry on our way, pointing out – and rightfully so – that each day we spent in travel was that much profit lost.”
Thutnofer was of medium height and wiry. His black hair had been cropped short and his face was shaven. He wore a knee-length kilt, a string of amulets signifying the gods of Kemet, and a broad beaded collar, bracelets, and armlets. If it was not for his swarthy complexion and long beak of a nose, he could have been taken for a man of Kemet.
“You travelled with him and Aper-el from where?”
“I met them at the harbour in Mennufer. Ben-Azan was my wife’s brother, Aper-el his nephew. We thought to travel to Kerma together. For safety’s sake and, with luck and the favour of the gods, to increase our profits.” Kerma was the largest city in the land of Kush.
Bak watched a small ferry shove off from the next quay. A small boy tended a bleating sheep and her twin lambs in the bow, while several chatting women surrounded by baskets and bundles stood in the shade of a rickety shelter, travelling home from the market. “You don’t seem surprised that I’ve confiscated his wares in the name of our sovereign.”