Place of Darkness lb-5

by Lauren Haney

  The chief architect’s mouth tightened. “They talk of re-bellion. Of laying down their tools and never again treading the sands of this valley.”

  “So they truly mean to act.” Bak snorted his disgust.

  “You must tell them without delay what you know,”

  Ramose insisted.

  “If I speak here and now, they’ll convince themselves that I’m saying what I’ve been told to say, or the malign spirit has blinded me to the truth, or it’s inhabited the body of a man. We didn’t climb all the way up that cliff to add strength to the tales they’re already telling.”

  “We’d hoped you’d set their thoughts to rest.”

  Bak could see how tired Ramose and Pashed were, how discouraged. He regretted he had nothing more positive to offer, only a plan that might or might not bear fruit. “You must tell the men that no more work will be done on the northern retaining wall until you know for a fact that it’s safe to toil there, then dismiss them. After they’ve gone, I’ll tell you what I plan and what you must do to help. We must convince them to remain at Djeser Djeseru.”

  While the chief architect, with Ramose at his side, spoke to the men, Bak sat down on a large irregular chunk of rock that had fallen from the cliff. It had been left where it lay in the expectation that it would be useful as a column drum or for some other architectural purpose. He was tired to the bone. The rescue effort and the climb had exhausted him. At least dusk had brought some relief from the heat. “Has the tomb been closed?” he asked Hori.

  “Yes, sir. As soon as Perenefer knew that every man who’d been toiling near the wall was accounted for, he brought his men back to fill the shaft.”

  “I thank the lord Amon,” Bak said fervently. At least one task had been completed without mishap.

  “The Lates is held sacred in Iunyt,” Ramose said, looking at the green amulet in Bak’s hand. Its exquisite workmanship was lost in the light of the torch Kasaya had stuck into the sand just outside the lean-to. “Could the man who wore this be from that city?”

  Bak, seated on Ramose’s stool, eyed the small figure, wishing it could talk. “Possibly. Then again, it may’ve been one of many different kinds of amulets in the collar.”

  “A missing element won’t be easy to spot.” Pashed settled himself beside Ramose, Hori, and Kasaya, seated on mats around Bak’s feet. “You’ve thought of a way to prevent the men from laying down their tools?”

  “I thought to take advantage of their never-failing willing-ness to believe rumor rather than fact.” Bak leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I wish you, Ramose, to allow your son Ani to speak with Hori. I wish the two of them to be seen with their heads together, speaking softly, secretly. After Hori departs, Ani must whisper in several men’s ears, telling them he’s heard from one who would know that I found signs of a man on the cliff, and I know for a fact that he caused the rocks to fall. That he’s all along been deliberately planting fear in their hearts by causing many of the accidents that have befallen Djeser Djeseru.”

  Ramose threw Bak a sharp look. “Such a tale will bring danger upon your head.”

  “We must keep the men here, and we must stop the death and injury. I can think of no other way.”

  Chapter Eight

  “You’ve become foolhardy, my son.” Ptahhotep’s scowl left no doubt as to how much he disapproved of his offspring. “A man who brings about one accident after another, one who causes the death and injury of innocent people, won’t hesitate to slay you if he feels he must.”

  “Not all the mishaps were deliberate.” Bak thanked the lord Amon that he had long ago outgrown the tendency to wiggle every time his parent reprimanded him. “Accidents happen all the time on construction sites. You know as well as I that many men who work in stone end their years with a disabled limb or a twisted back.”

  “This is the second time that cliff face has fallen.” Ptahhotep, seated in the shade of a lean-to built atop his house, gave his son a stern look across a three-legged pottery brazier blackened and crusty from long use. The mound of charcoal inside, burned down to a reddish glow, was too small to throw off much heat. Nor had the lord Khepre risen high enough in the eastern sky to heat the day or melt the haze hanging over the river. “Tell me again how many men have dropped beneath the weight of its stones.”

  He knew very well the answer to his question. Bak had told him less than an hour before. “The accidents must stop, Father. Not just those at the northern retaining wall, but all across the construction site.”

  “And you must also find Montu’s slayer.” The physician poured warm honey into a small bowl of blue-green leaves and, using a knobbed piece of wood, began to crush them into a paste that gave off the musky fragrance of rue. “Could his death be in some way related to the accidents?”

  Bak stood up and walked to the edge of the roof, where he could look down upon his horses. He could breathe easier with his father’s attention turned away from what he knew in his heart was a foolhardy plan. “Except for Kames, every tale I’ve heard thus far leads me to believe he asked to be slain, that he was killed because someone hated him.”

  “You told me yourself he looked more a fool than a vil-lain.”

  “His death was no accident, Father. He was struck on the head and dragged into the tomb. If not for the foreman’s fear of burying a man alive, he would have vanished forever. As he was meant to.”

  Ptahhotep sprinkled a few drops of natron into the mix-ture and added a dollop of animal fat. “Could he have come upon the man who’s been causing these accidents?”

  “I’d not be surprised. From what I’ve learned, he was slain after dark, and only then have men seen the malign spirit. But what was he doing at Djeser Djeseru in the dead of night? Was he not afraid, as everyone else is?”

  “The workmen still spend each night in the valley.”

  “After dark they stay close to their huts, where they have lamps and torches and each other’s company to give them courage.” Bak spotted Hori and Kasaya coming toward his father’s small house along a raised path between dessicated fields. “Not surprisingly, the malign spirit stays well clear of those huts.”

  “Why must you refer to that vile criminal as a malign spirit?” Ptahhotep asked irritably. “He’s a man, and so you should describe him.”

  “I use the words as a name, for I’ve no other name to call him.”

  The physician grunted, not happy with the answer but unable or unwilling to come up with anything better. “Did Montu often stay late?”

  “He was usually the first to leave, so we’ve been told, and he always went to his home in Waset or to his estate a half hour’s walk upriver. He evidently enjoyed his comfort.

  Those workmen’s huts are simple affairs, and the food is plain and monotonous.”

  Ptahhotep added a pinch of ground willow branch to the bowl. “If he learned a man was causing the accidents, he’d have no reason to fear a malign spirit.”

  “Would he not have greater reason to fear that man than a nonexistent being created to take advantage of men’s superstitions?”

  They both knew that any man who had brought about so much death and destruction, especially at a place as important as their sovereign’s memorial temple, would be certain to face a horrible death by impalement. He would kill and kill again to keep his secret.

  “Montu might’ve stumbled upon the men who’ve been rifling the old tombs,” Bak said, giving Ptahhotep no time to return to the subject of his own safety. “I’ve not explored the hillsides that enclose the valley nor have I searched the valley floor, but where kings are buried, the tombs of the nobility are close by-as the construction of our sovereign’s new temple has proven.”

  “The confusion of a large project would provide good cover,” Ptahhotep said thoughtfully.

  “Yes, but there’d be many extra eyes to spot an open tomb or furtive act.” Bak waved to Kasaya and Hori to let them know he had seen them, ducked beneath the lean-to to pick up his sheathed dagger, and t
ied it to his belt. “Of course, a malign spirit would discourage prying.”

  “Do you suppose Lieutenant Menna has considered the possibility?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not very forthcoming. He fears I’ll tread on his toes.” Bak scooped up his baton of office. “One thing I do know: a man who creates a malign spirit is not superstitious-which eliminates most of the men who toil at Djeser Djeseru. And the average tomb robber, too. At least the local men Menna believes are involved.”

  “Where do you go today, my son?” The worry returned to Ptahhotep’s face. “Back to that valley of death?”

  “I’ll go first to Montu’s home in Waset. If the lord Amon smiles upon me, he’ll have left behind the reason he remained at Djeser Djeseru the night he was slain.”

  “Will you not wait until my poultice is warmed? That abrasion on your thigh looks dreadful.”

  “Later, Father. Tonight when I’ve more time.” Bak flashed his parent a teasing smile. “Besides, I don’t wish to walk the streets of Waset wearing a bandage from hip to knee.”

  Ptahhotep scowled, but did not press the point. “I must go to Waset after midday, to the house of life. If you remain in the city until an hour or so before nightfall, you can sail back with me.”

  “I’ll not forget.” Bak walked to the interior stairway, paused. “Don’t expect me, but don’t be surprised to see me there, either. I wish to give the workmen time to hear the rumor I started, to let it seep into their hearts.” He walked partway down the stairs, turned back, grinned. “I’ll send Hori and Kasaya in my stead, Hori to follow the rumor’s progress and make sure it travels a true path and Kasaya to guard his back.”

  Ptahhotep glowered at his son’s flippancy. “A true path?”

  “With luck and the help of the gods, and with Ramose’s knowledge of the men and Hori’s deft tongue, their fear will turn to anger that one no different than they has toyed with their fear of the unknown.”

  Montu’s dwelling-brought to him through marriage, Bak recalled-was located in a highly respectable neighborhood a short walk from the mansion of the lord Amon, one among many structures that had been handed down from parent to child for innumerable generations. Long blocks of houses lined both sides of a narrow street that seldom saw sunlight and, as a result, smelled stale and a bit rancid.

  Standing side by side, most were three stories high, with a lower floor that provided shelter and a place of work for the servants, and two upper floors for family use. On the roofs, Bak glimpsed cone-shaped granaries, pigeon cotes, and lean-tos for additional storage and work space.

  The entrance to the home he sought was three steps above the street and set off by a low balustrade lined with potted poppies. Two young sycamores, also in pots, stood like sentinels on either side of the door. Bak was impressed.

  He had not expected the architect to live in so sumptuous a house.

  “Montu lied to me at times, yes, and he had an eye for a pretty woman, but he treated us as well as could be expected.” Mutnefret, Montu’s widow, sat on a low stool in a rather stiff and formal room used for greeting guests. Her husband’s chair sat empty on the dais behind her. “I’d brought a daughter to the marriage, as you know, and he very much wanted a son.”

  “The property you possessed must’ve eased his disappointment,” Bak said in a wry voice. “This house is most impressive, and I’m told you have a substantial country estate across the river.”

  “We lived well, to be sure.” She was comfortably plump and, to Bak’s eye, looked every cubit a motherly figure, but the smile on her face was strangely contented for one whose husband had so recently been slain.

  Seated on a stool similar to hers, he faced her across a low table, sipping a tangy red wine and nibbling sweet cakes and honeyed dates. Two columns carved and painted to look like lilies supported the ceiling, two large pottery water jars stood on a stone lustration slab, and niches in the wall contained paintings of the divine triad: the lord Amon, his spouse the lady Mut, and their son the lord Khonsu. Beside the dais stood a large wide-mouthed bowl of sweet-scented white lilies floating on water. A hint of a breeze wafted through high windows, barely stirring the warm air. He found the formality of the room and even Mutnefret’s hospi-tality distancing, not conducive to easy talk, putting him at a disadvantage.

  “I’ve been told he shirked his duty, not only at Djeser Djeseru, but at your country estate. That you and your daughter toil alongside your servants, and his sole task was to issue orders.”

  “You’ve been listening to gossip, Lieutenant.” Her eyes darted toward a side door, drawn by the sudden appearance of a slender and quite pretty young woman of fourteen or so years. “He had his faults, I know, and didn’t always get along with his colleagues, but he meant well.”

  “Mother!” The girl stalked across the room to stand before her parent, hands on hips, fire in her eyes. “Montu was lazy. His sole preoccupation was to do as little as possible.”

  Mutnefret looked hurt. “He was a good father to you, Sitre.”

  “My father, the man who gave me life, was kind and gentle, one who toiled from dawn to dusk.” Sitre pulled a stool close and plopped onto it. “That wretched Montu could in no way replace him.”

  Bak, startled by the young woman’s outspoken behavior, eyed her surreptitiously. The simple white sheath she wore hardly concealed her shapely figure; rather, it enhanced it.

  Her long, glossy black hair, her dark eyes, and her vivid mouth were most attractive. Why was she not yet wed? he wondered. Certainly her sincerity, her spirit, would not appeal to every young man.

  “Children!” Mutnefret shook her head at the unfairness of it all. “When first I wed Montu, I prayed to the lady Hathor that I’d give birth time and time again, but now-”

  “All you wanted were sons!” Sitre tossed her head, flinging her hair across her shoulders. “Boys to satisfy his desire to reproduce himself.”

  Her mother ignored her. “Now I thank the goddess that I had just the one and that she’s of an age to wed.”

  “Then what will you do?” the young woman asked, her tone scathing. “Go find another man like Montu who has a worthy position but no wealth to speak of?”

  “Sitre!” Mutnefret glared at her daughter. “Have you never heard the ancient maxim: ‘Do not give your mother cause to blame you lest she raise her hands to god and he hears her cries’?”

  Bak was beginning to feel uncomfortable. It was one thing to listen to people divulge secrets that might lead him to a slayer or thief, quite another to hear them continue an argument that had most likely been going on from the day Mutnefret wed Montu. Of course, the argument might have led to the architect’s death, but if so, why was he slain at the memorial temple instead of closer to home? “Did he ever speak of Djeser Djeseru, of the many accidents that have occurred there?”

  “He mentioned the accidents, yes,” Mutnefret said.

  Her daughter snickered. “And the malign spirit that’s been causing them.”

  Bak eyed the young woman with an interest that had nothing to do with her appearance. “He believed in the malign spirit?”

  “He didn’t,” Mutnefret said, giving her daughter an overly generous smile, “but it pleased him to tell Sitre he did. She’s of an age where she thinks she knows more than her betters, and he enjoyed tweaking her nose.”

  Her daughter flushed, whether from embarrassment or anger, Bak could not tell. “Don’t you remember what he said, Mother? That he saw with his own eyes the malign spirit, and another man once told him he did, too?”

  Bak’s head snapped around. “He saw it?”

  “He was jesting,” Mutnefret said.

  The younger woman stared defiance at the older. “So he told us, and I believed him.”

  “When and where and what did it look like?” he demanded.

  “He wasn’t serious,” Mutnefret insisted. “Sitre is so gullible he couldn’t resist teasing her.”

  The young woman flashed her mother a vicious
look. “He saw something.” Her eyes, large and intense, darted toward Bak. “He spoke of it last week. He wasn’t specific about where he saw it, but somewhere at Djeser Djeseru. As for its appearance. . Well, from a distance, he said, it looked like light and shadow, but when I asked him how it appeared close up, he laughed and waved a hand, dismissing the question and me.”

  “My dear child.” Mutnefret reached for her daughter’s hand. “You want to believe the worst about him. You want to think him a fool. He wasn’t. He was a good, kind man. He had faults, to be sure, but so do you.”

  Sitre jerked her hand away, shot to her feet, and flew from the room. Angry sobs reached them through the door.

  “She cries for a lost love, not my husband,” Mutnefret said regretfully. “She wished to wed a soldier from the garrison, an infantry officer, a nice young man with no future.

  Montu forbade it, insisting instead that she accept the peti-tion of an older man, a wealthy landowner whose country estate adjoins ours. She’s never forgiven him.” She rose to her feet. “I must go to her, Lieutenant.”

  Bak also stood up. “Do you have any idea why Montu remained at Djeser Djeseru the night he was slain?”

  “I, too, have wondered.” A puzzled frown creased her forehead. “When he didn’t come home for his evening meal, I thought he had gone to our country house. Our scribe, who manages the estate, had been toiling there all day. He returned to Waset, thinking to find him here.”

  “Did you not begin to worry?”

  “He often spent his evenings in a house of pleasure near the mansion of the lord Ptah, and he’d mentioned a new woman there, pretty and young, he’d told me. I assumed he was with her.”

  Bak had met women who willingly shared their husbands with other women, but few as untroubled by unfaithfulness as Mutnefret appeared to be. “I must see Montu’s place of work, mistress.”

  She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “I’ll send a servant, who’ll show you the way.”