by Lauren Haney
With visible reluctance, he ducked low and seated himself before Bak. Dust clung to the sweat on his body, making him look a part of the earth. “What can I tell you, sir, that I’ve not already told your scribe?”
Bak kept his breathing shallow, measured. Mery was much in need of a swim. The faint breeze that had arisen could not clear away the smell of the man. It completely overpowered the faint musty odor of the broken mudbrick walls of the small temple of Djeserkare Amonhotep and his mother Ahmose Nefertari.
Laying his baton across his knees, he pulled a beer jar from the basket beside his stool and handed it to the workman. “I want to hear of the accident from your own lips, Mery, not from those of another man.”
“Yes, sir.” Surprised by the offering, Mery rearranged his thin buttocks on the mat, broke out the dried mud plug, and gulped noisily from the jar. “We were pulling a statue of our sovereign, a big one. Big and heavy. A twin to the one we were moving when your scribe came to get me a short while ago. Finished except for being painted. Ready to raise in its assigned place.”
“It was meant to stand in the temple?”
“Yes, sir. Outside the sanctuary door.” Mery drank again and licked the moisture from his lips. “We’d hauled it as far as the bottom of the ramp and left it there overnight. It was on a sledge, like the one we’re using today.” His hand tightening around the jar, he cleared his throat. “That morning, the morning of the accident, a man poured water on the ramp ahead of the sledge, making the slope slick, and we began to pull it. I’d guess there were twenty or so of us and we were moving right along. It happened when we were more than halfway to the top.”
“Go on,” Bak prompted. The tale was hard to tell, he could see, but he had to hear it.
“Yes, sir.” Mery moistened his mouth, but this time he took no joy from the brew. “I was one of the closest men to the sledge and I had a better look than most.” He shivered in spite of the heat. “I tell you, sir, it was. . It was awful.”
Bak thought to touch the man’s arm, but the small show of sympathy would most likely rattle him, breaking the flow of his tale. “Tell me exactly what you saw, Mery, every detail.”
“I heard a loud crack, the breaking of a dowel, I figured later. When I turned around, I saw that the front crossbeam was no longer snug against the runner on the right. I heard another crack, the dowel holding the second crossbeam breaking. The statue was heavy, the strain great, and one after another the rest of the dowels broke and the sledge collapsed. The statue, still roped to the pieces, slewed partway around on the wet slope. Dragging runners and crossbeams and rope along with it, it slid down the slope and toward the side of the ramp. We tried to stop it, but it was too big and heavy. It knocked one of our mates off the ramp, tipped over the edge, and fell on him, killing him and breaking into a dozen pieces.”
He rubbed his face as if trying to eradicate the memory. “I tell you, sir, it was awful. If not the work of the malign spirit, it was that of a malevolent god.”
No god caused the accident, Bak was convinced. Sledges were strong, made to hold extraordinary weights. This one had been tampered with, the dowels weakened.
“I tripped over a rope, sir, and fell into the quarry. Thanks to good luck and the will of the gods, I landed on a ledge not far below and suffered nothing more serious than a bump on the head.” The fresh-faced young apprentice stonemason fussed with the nail on his big toe, refusing to meet Bak’s eye. “I should’ve been watching my step, I know, but something distracted me.”
“What exactly?”
“I. .” The boy’s eyes darted toward Bak and away. “I don’t know, sir.”
Suspicious, recalling his own youthful digressions, Bak asked, “How much beer had you had that day?”
The answer was slow in coming, given with reluctance.
“The morning was hot-like today-and I was thirsty. I. .
Well, my head was spinning, sir, and an evil genie had invaded my stomach. It must’ve made me careless.”
An accident, pure and simple. A man too besotted to place one foot in front of the other.
“I didn’t see it happen, sir.” The guard Ineni stood at the edge of the lean-to, looking uncertain as to whether the tale he had to tell warranted Bak’s attention. “I can only speak of what I found.”
“His death was attributed to the malign spirit, was it not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you must satisfy my curiosity.”
Ineni brushed several small pebbles off the mat, settled down, and accepted a jar of beer with gratitude. “He was a guard, sir, his name Dedu. He was a big man, young and strong, rather like your Medjay Kasaya. Nothing less than a malign spirit could’ve caused the accident that made him fall, striking his head as he did.”
Bak laid his baton on the ground by his feet, putting Ineni at ease. The guard needed no reminder of his authority. “He fell where, Ineni? And when?”
“About two years ago, sir. From the upper colonnade, down into the area where the new chapel of the lady Hathor is being built. He fell on a pile of stones waiting to be placed beneath its foundation.”
“You found him at first light?”
“Yes, sir. I’d gone out to take his place. He usually waited for me at the top of the ramp, but this time he wasn’t there.
So I went in search of him.”
Sipping from his jar of beer, Bak wondered why Menna had removed Ineni from the old tomb and put Imen in his place as a guard. He seemed a dependable man, and consci-entious. “You went to him as soon as you saw him there?”
“Yes, sir. I hoped to find him alive.” Seeing Bak drink, Ineni followed suit. The accident had happened too long ago for him to be upset, but he could not help but be moved by the memory. “Dedu was no longer among the living, that I saw right away. He had an ugly gash behind his left ear. His flesh held no warmth and his skin was pale and waxy looking.”
Bak gave him a sharp look. “You rolled him over to see the wound?”
“Oh, no, sir. He was lying facedown when I found him.”
How could a man strike the back of his head when he fell forward? The thought was not a question, the answer too evident. “Where was the rock he struck?”
“It was there, close by his head. I saw the blood on it.”
“Had blood pooled around his head, or was it on the one stone? How big was that stone?” The words tumbled out too fast, too insistent.
Ineni, who failed to notice Bak’s agitation, looked thoughtful. “The rock, about the size of a small melon, was stained and. . No, I don’t remember seeing blood anywhere else.” His eyes opened wide as the truth hit him. “You don’t believe he fell, do you, sir? You think someone struck him from behind.”
“I suppose you didn’t think to look for blood among the columns above.”
“No, sir,” Ineni said in a small voice.
Bak sat quite still. Montu’s murder was not the first to occur at Djeser Djeseru. Dedu had suffered a similar fate.
“We were hurrying, sir. That was the problem.”
“You picked up the ladder, swung it around, and it hit the scaffold.” Bak crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the stout, ruddy-faced sculptor of reliefs. “Did you not think of the men toiling on top?”
“I did, sir, but by then it was too late. Ahmose had fallen and broken his wrist.”
Another accident, a simple act of carelessness.
“I was sweating, sir, and my hands were slick. When I bent over the retaining wall, my mallet slipped out of my hand. A mischievous god made it fall on Ptahmose’s head.”
Bak threw a pained look at Hori. This was the eleventh individual he had interviewed. He had never heard so much mention of spirits and genies and mischievous gods, most malevolent, a few merely playful. Not a man among them had failed to hear that he had found signs of a man on the cliff face, but for some reason he could not comprehend, it was far easier to believe in the vague and mysterious rather than the proven and ordinary
.
“We’d raised that portion of the retaining wall to about shoulder height the previous day and were getting ready to lay the facing stones in front of it.”
“Why had the space between the retaining wall and the terrace been filled?” Bak asked. “Shouldn’t that have been done after the wall was nearer completion, with the facing in place to strengthen it?”
The short, muscular workman, Sobekhotep, wiped with the back of his hand the sweat from his upper lip, streaking dirt across one cheek. He smelled no better than Mery had.
“That’s right, sir. Montu warned the debris bearers many times to add the fill later.”
“Yet his instructions weren’t followed.”
“They were, sir, but we didn’t know that at the time.
When we returned to the wall that morning, we found a lot more debris behind it than had been there the day before, and we even saw the end of the limb pressing against it. We assumed he or Pashed had ordered the fill thrown in and thought no more about it.”
Bak cursed beneath his breath. Workmen were the same everywhere: accepting without question what should always be questioned. “Did you suspect the malign spirit of adding the fill?”
“Oh, no, sir.” Sobekhotep shook his head vehemently.
“The accident happened before that wretched creature made itself known.”
“To what did you attribute the mishap? You must’ve thought up some explanation.”
“We didn’t, sir. Didn’t think, that is.”
Bak did not know whether to laugh or cry. The man’s sincerity was admirable, his innocence a danger to himself and all who toiled near him. “You must tell me what happened.”
“We added another course of casing blocks. Ahotep-our foreman, my father’s brother-climbed up to make sure the blocks were seated properly. He bumped against the retaining wall.” Sobekhotep licked his lips, blinked hard. “That’s all it took. One bump. Without warning, the wall burst outward, stones flying. Ahotep was struck in the face by the limb and the wall collapsed around him. We pulled him free, only to discover that a smaller limb coming off the larger had gone through his eye and deep into his head. He breathed his last in my arms.”
“You told my scribe that Montu was angry when he saw what had happened.”
“Yes, sir. He believed the limb had been bent, putting it under tension, and dirt and debris thrown around it to hold it in place temporarily. He thought it was meant to spring forward and break the wall. As it did.” Sobekhotep’s mouth tightened at the memory. “Montu thought it a prank. A mean, vile prank.”
“Later, I suppose the accident was laid at the feet of the malign spirit.”
Sobekhotep nodded. “Now you say that vile specter is a man.”
“More than one, I think. It would take at least two to set up the accident you’ve described.”
The accident had been planned, without doubt. No man could have predicted Ahotep’s death, so the goal had been to damage the wall and the men’s morale. If anyone was struck down, so be it.
By day’s end Bak had interviewed almost thirty men, sorting out obvious accidents from those that were suspect.
A few lay somewhere in between, impossible to place in either category. Those he believed to be deliberate had almost all occurred early in the morning, which led him to believe the scene had been set during the night, a time when the men feared to leave their huts, when Djeser Djeseru lay deserted and the malign spirit could set the scene for destruction with little fear of discovery.
The malign spirit. He let out a cynical laugh. With few exceptions, the men he had talked with continued to cling to their belief that an evil specter was responsible for each and every accident, including the rock slide onto the northern retaining wall. The tale Hori and Ani had spread had fallen on deaf ears. Since no man had been seen on the cliff above the wall, Bak had misinterpreted the signs he found there. Or so the men believed.
Bak entered the lean-to beneath which Ramose and his scribes toiled, dropped onto a shaded wedge of sand, and set beside him the empty basket that had earlier been filled with beer jars. He was hot and tired, badly in need of a swim.
Looking up from the scroll on his lap, Amonemhab asked,
“No luck, Lieutenant?”
“The day’s not been entirely wasted.”
“Nor a complete success, I gather.”
“Did anyone tell you of the scribe who fell to his death?”
Ani asked, speaking quickly, as if wishing to silence his grandfather. “An accident, they say, but I don’t believe it.”
Amonemhab snorted. “Don’t bother the lieutenant with trivialities, boy. Huni didn’t die at Djeser Djeseru.”
“Near enough,” the youth said, a challenge in his voice.
To Bak, he added, “He was found in the canal along which barges bring hard stone and other materials from the river to the causeway.”
Bak saw skepticism on the older man’s face and utter conviction on that of the boy. “Tell me what happened, Ani.”
“As far as I know, no one saw Huni fall,” Amonemhab said, indifferent to Bak’s cue. “He was one of our own, a scribe here at Djeser Djeseru. After he died, Ramose brought me out here to take his place.”
Ani glared at his grandfather, who seemed intent on spoil-ing his tale. “He was found in the water beside a barge carrying a load of granite. It was moored at the end of the causeway, waiting to be unloaded. The back of his head was crushed in. Those who found him thought he had fallen off the barge or the bank of the canal, striking his head on some unknown object as he fell.” The boy’s face took on a stubborn look. “I don’t believe it. He wasn’t a careless man, sir, nor was he clumsy. He’d never have fallen backward unless he was pushed.”
“You seem quite certain he was slain. Did you tell anyone at the time?”
“No one would listen to me, sir, but I knew something wasn’t right. I knew it!”
Bak accepted a jar of beer from Amonemhab. While he sipped the thick, bitter brew, he thought over Ani’s tale. The boy could be mistaken in thinking the death a murder, but he could as easily be right.
Other than the accidents caused by carelessness or the whims of the gods, most had been well thought out, set up in such a way that they would be accepted as mishaps, as the wrath of the malign spirit and not the work of a man. But, assuming the scribe had indeed been slain, as he felt certain the guard Dedu had been, he had found two men whose deaths had not been so neatly planned or carried out. Two in addition to Montu, all three struck on the back of the head.
Why, he wondered, had these three deaths not been planned out as the others had been? Had the victims actually seen the malign spirit or guessed his name, making their immediate demise essential?
“When did the rumor of a malign spirit start?” Bak asked.
Ramose, Amonemhab, and Pashed looked at each other and shrugged. Their faces reflected the reddish glow of the fire around which the four of them sat. Hori, Kasaya, and Ani, though they could barely see in the growing darkness, were playing catch with a leather ball on the open stretch of sand between the huts and the ancient temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. Hori had sluffed off his veneer of a serious young man to play with the same unbridled zest as the boy.
Kasaya never lost his youthful enthusiasm.
“The tale had started before I came here,” Amonemhab said.
“Two years ago, that was. When Huni died, as we told you.”
“It started before then.” Pashed dunked a chunk of bread into the bowl setting on the fiery coals. The stew smelled of mutton and onions and tasted slightly burned. “Three years ago at least.”
Ramose nodded. “Longer even than that, I’d guess.”
“How did it get started?” With his father well guarded, Bak had decided that he and his men would spend the night at Djeser Djeseru. Through the day, he had learned a considerable amount; a few more hours might add to that knowledge.
The architect shrugged. “The men pursue an excu
se for superstition and build on it. The old tombs we’ve come upon fuel the fire, so I suspect the first one we found set the rumor alight.”
“That would’ve been about four years ago,” Ramose said.
“I doubt we knew of him so long ago.”
“They’re always seeking something to fear,” Amonemhab agreed. “It gives them an excuse to leave their places of work long before dark.”
“I’ve never known them not to give fair measure,” Useramon said, coming out of the darkness. The tall, bulky chief sculptor knelt between Amonemhab and Ramose and edged sideways, making room for his small friend Heribsen, tag-ging close behind. “Talk of the mysterious brightens their lives, adds zest to an otherwise bland existence.”
Bak doubled over his bread and picked up within the fold a chunk of meat. “You speak lightly of a deadly game, Useramon.”
“He pretends indifference, Lieutenant. I, for one, can’t feign such nonchalance.” Heribsen accepted a jar of beer from Ramose and took a sip. In the erratic light of the fire, the deep furrows in his broad brow emphasized his worry. “I know you say the malign spirit is a man, and perhaps it’s true. But man or spirit, will it sit back and let you drive the fear from the hearts of men it’s so carefully made afraid? Or will it retaliate with more death and destruction? Will it reserve its vengeance for you, or for all of us who toil here? A few at a time or all at once?”
“Lieutenant Bak!” Hori, letting the ball pass over his head, pointed toward the temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep.
“Look, sir! The malign spirit!”
The youth’s call rang loud and clear across the sand. Bak leaped to his feet and looked toward the ruined structure.
The other men around the fire followed suit, as did those sitting in front of the nearby huts. He thought he glimpsed a light among the broken columns behind the terrace that faced them, but it vanished so fast he could not be sure.
“I see nothing,” Pashed said.