by Lauren Haney
“Seldom if ever rendezvousing with Wensu because the distances are too great and the timing of a meeting too difficult.”
Bak nodded. “Which accounts for their use of a temporary storage place-the tomb Intef found, most likely.”
The rapids slid away behind and a full sail drove them around the boulders, revealing a small cove. The northerly breeze faltered, cut off by a wall of granite, the surviving portion of the rock spine not yet weathered and broken. The sail drooped and momentum carried the skiff into still waters.
Upstream, a boulder the size of a great warship turned the current aside, while the spine provided a quaylike ledge on the downstream side. Tamarisks grew in profusion at the back of the cove and behind the boulder. The rocky spine, the trees, and the boulder might not hide altogether a ship and men loading cargo, but they would certainly confuse the eyes of the soldiers manning the distant watchtowers overlooking the desert track, especially on a moonless night.
Bak gave Imsiba a tentative smile. He had been too disappointed too many times through the morning to allow himself too great a bout of optimism. “This looks an ideal place to moor a ship.”
“Where’s the nearby oasis?” the Medjay asked, equally cautious. “Not those few tamarisks, surely.”
He took up the oars while Bak lowered the yard and secured the sail. Hardly daring to breathe, they rowed the length of the ledge, searching for signs of wear. They found several spots where the stone was white and gritty, bruised.
With growing certainty, they beached the skiff beneath the trees and hurried out on the ledge. They found with no trouble the mooring stakes Captain Roy and Wensu had left behind. After so discouraging a morning, they could barely believe their good luck. This was the place they sought.
From the height of the ledge, they saw palm trees beyond the boulder to the south. Heavy clusters of reddish dates hung from their crowns. There, Bak guessed, they would find the oasis. And as fruit could not develop unless fertilized by man, the farmer would not be far away.
A well-trod path through the tamarisk grove took them to an irregular triangle of rich black earth deposited at the lower end of a shallow, dry watercourse long ago clogged by a landslide. The core of the oasis lay open to the sun, with ditches delimiting garden plots. Tiny plants peeked up through drying soil-onions, melons, beans, and lentils-while clover burst forth in a rich green carpet. Around the periphery, palms and a few acacias shaded goats, sheep, four donkeys, and a dun-colored ox. A small mudbrick house huddled against the ancient landslide, allowing, Bak assumed, for one room above ground and one or two dug into the earth at the back. Smoke curled into the sky from an outdoor oven. The aroma of baking bread reminded him of the midday meal they had left untouched in their skiff.
The animals, he noted, were plump and sleek. An open shed roofed with reed mats sheltered a dozen or more sheaves of hay. Ducks and geese and wild birds scratched in the dirt around a like number of large red pottery jars used, no doubt, to store grain.
Imsiba voiced Bak’s conclusion. “For a farm so small, these people seem unaccountably prosperous.”
“Do you think the gods dispense gifts in the night?” Bak grinned.
“More likely a headless man.”
At the river’s edge, a man of twenty-five years or so, square of body and firm of build, sat on an overturned skiff, cleaning fish. Spotting the approaching pair, he stood up, a gutted perch in his hand, and watched them, making no move to welcome them.
A plump young woman sat in front of the house in the shade of an acacia, her legs drawn up beneath her, forming a clay bowl in the old-fashioned manner without a wheel. A baby lay on a pallet beside her, sleeping, while a girl of three or four years poked at the rich dark mud in a nearby bowl.
The child noticed the strangers, pointed. The woman scrambled to her feet, scooped up the baby, and caught the girl by the arm to drag her inside the house. A boy of six or so
204 / Lauren Haney stood in the dappled shade of the date palms, sucking his thumb, staring.
“They seem most anxious to befriend us,” Imsiba said with a wry smile.
Bak’s face remained grim, his sense of irony deserting him.
“Like all the others we’ve talked to today, but with more reason, I suspect.”
He raised his baton of office and beckoned. In no great hurry, the farmer laid the fish and a gutting knife in a basket and walked toward them. Bak held his ground, making the man cover the distance. The local farmers might not trust authority, but they respected the power it carried.
“I’m Lieutenant Bak, officer in charge of the Medjay police in Buhen, and this is my sergeant, Imsiba.” His voice was crisp, but pleasant enough. “We’ve come on a matter of importance.”
“Kefia, I’m called.” The man’s face, as square as his body, was impassive, closed to prying. “We see few strangers here and know little of the world outside our small oasis.”
“With so pleasant a mooring place so close at hand…”
Bak waved vaguely toward the cove. “…I’d think any number of men would use it as a safe harbor. Fishermen. Farmers trading excess produce. The men who pull ships up the Belly of Stones during high water.” He paused, letting Kefia think what he would, then hardened his voice. “And men who deal in contraband, thinking to avoid the law of the land.”
The farmer blinked, but otherwise appeared unmoved.
“Those who come to trade either fish or fowl or produce seek us out. Any men up to no good…?” He shrugged. “We don’t invite trouble, nor do they. They stay well away from us, and good luck to them, I say.”
Imsiba gave him a hard look. “To let smugglers go about their business is an offense against the lady Maat-and our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut.”
A flock of pigeons rose with a whir of wings from an island a short distance downriver, giving the farmer an excuse to avoid the Medjay’s sharp eyes. “I mind my own business.”
Bak wanted to shake the truth from him; instead he smiled.
“You’ve a pleasant farm, Kefia, but one too small, I’d have thought, to use an ox as a beast of burden.”
The farmer glanced toward the dun-colored creature and back. His voice took on a hint of surliness. “As you can see for yourself, I’m a man alone, with no sons of an age to toil in the fields. The ox helps me plow.”
“Surely these small fields…” Bak pointed his baton at the clover. “…don’t yield enough hay to feed an ox you use once a year.” He swung the baton toward the animals. “…and four hungry donkeys as well.”
“The dates.” Kefia answered too fast, too emphatically.
“They’re the finest grown along the Belly of Stones. I take them to the market in Buhen. I need the donkeys to carry them.”
Bak gave him an incredulous look. “You haul dates on the backs of donkeys, plodding for a day or more along a dusty desert trail, when a boat would be cleaner and faster?”
The farmer tried to hold Bak’s glance, but could not.
“Two men have been slain, Kefia, their lives lost at the hands of the men you’re protecting. They could as easily turn on you. If I come back tomorrow and find you and your family slain, you alone must bear the burden of guilt.”
With a low whimper, Kefia buried his face in his hands.
His voice shook. “All right! I’ll speak! But I’m a dead man already.”
Bak glanced at Imsiba, sharing a quick look of relief, but the satisfaction he felt did not blind him to the fear he had sensed throughout their journey upstream from Kor. “You must leave this place at once,” he told the farmer, speaking more kindly. “You’ve a skiff, I see. Take your family to Kor.
Tell Troop Captain Nebwa I sent you. He’ll keep you safe until I lay hands on the men you fear.”
“What of my animals? My tender young crops? I can’t leave them to wither and die.”
“He’ll send soldiers to watch over your farm. Now tell me all you know, leaving nothing out, and start first with a description of
the men who come in the night.”
“I’ve never seen anyone!”
Imsiba gave a sharp, jeering laugh. “You’ve never gone to the cove? You’ve never hidden in the dark, looking out on the men who load or unload cargo?”
“Never! I swear it!” Kefia hung his head in shame. “I was afraid to, if the truth be told.”
“Those beasts of burden,” Bak said, nodding toward the animals. “Did they appear one day as if by magic?”
Kefia shook his head, moaned. “One night as I lay sleeping, a voice awakened me. The voice of a man telling me to stay in the house and make no effort to see him.” The farmer swallowed hard. “He said he had brought an ox and four donkeys, and he had brought hay and grain for them and jars of oil and lengths of linen for myself and mine. He said I must care for the animals as if they were my own. If I should hear his footsteps in the night, I must make no effort to see or follow. And I must never go near the cove after dark.” Kefia cleared his throat and swallowed again. “As long as I obeyed, he told me, I would be amply rewarded, but if I failed him…” His voice faltered, dropped to a murmur. “…I and mine would perish.”
“So you did as you were told,” Imsiba prodded.
Kefia nodded. “The animals are sometimes taken away and returned in the night, and each time I find gifts on my doorstep. When next I go to the cove, I see signs of a ship and the presence of men.” His voice rose in pitch, trembled.
“That’s all I can tell you! I swear it!”
Bak, like Imsiba, could not believe Kefia had resisted the temptation to spy on his benefactor. To make him admit he had done so would be difficult if not impossible. He thought it best to move on. Perhaps someone with less to lose would have noticed more.
“The pigeons rose from the downstream end of the island.”
Bak, seated in the prow of the skiff, studied a patch of churning foam off to the right, half-submerged rocks lurking beneath a delicate froth. “A flock of a hundred or more.
We’ll find a farmer who’s raising them, I’m sure.”
Imsiba glanced upward, his eyes following a sheer bluff of black rock to a summit crowned by an overhanging acacia.
“The view from up there must be spectacular. How much of the cove, I wonder, can be seen after dark?”
“Look!” Bak pointed. “Goats!”
Ahead, the face of the cliff fell away and tumbled rocks formed a more gradual slope. Acacias, tough grasses, and weeds clung to the upper reaches, while tamarisk fringed the lower. A half dozen of the sure-footed animals stared down, unafraid.
“Did Nebamon’s servant not say that the farmer who talked of the headless man went to Buhen with goats to trade?”
“He did, and with the cove so near…” Bak left the thought, the hope unspoken.
Rounding a shoulder of glistening rock, they came upon a papyrus skiff lying among the weeds above the waterline.
A short, wiry man with limp gray hair sat on a projecting rock, fishing pole in hand. The instant they came into view, he jammed the pole into the earth, pushed himself to his feet, and scrambled down the slope to the water. Catching the prow of their boat, he pulled it close so they could dis-embark.
“Took you long enough to get here, Lieutenant,” he said, grinning broadly.
Bak laughed. News of their mission had traveled faster than they. “If you know who we are, you must know why we’ve come.”
“The headless man.” Helping Imsiba drag the skiff up on the bank, the old man looked with a covetous eye at the weapons lying in the hull and at the basket of food and drink they had yet to consume. “I’ve seen him. Not just from up there…” He waved a hand toward the highest point on the island. “…but from the water. Couldn’t get too close, mind you, but I got near enough to see the black cloth wrapped around his head and to hear him talk to the masters of the ships moored in the cove and to see the grand and worthy objects they’ve been smuggling across the frontier.” Like many a man who lived apart from his fellows, he was gar-rulous to a fault.
Imsiba eyed him narrowly. “If you saw so much, why didn’t you report it long ago?”
“Fear, pure and simple.”
“And now?” the Medjay demanded.
The old man gave an exaggerated shrug. “I think it time the scales of justice are balanced.”
And with us close on the heels of the smugglers, Bak thought, you’ve decided it’s safe to seek a reward. Thus your trip to Buhen. “We’ve brought bread and beer and the flesh of a goose, old man. Could we find a place to sit in comfort?
We can talk while we share the food.”
Eyes sparkling with anticipation, the old man gestured toward a narrow, winding path that led upward. “Ahmose, I’m called. Welcome to my farm.”
The island was a gigantic clump of cracked and broken rock whose nooks and crannies had been filled, through the centuries, with wind-blown sand and silt laboriously hauled from natural deposits found elsewhere. The larger patches of soil were planted with fruits and vegetables, the lesser supported the weeds and bushes and wild trees that provided food for the goats. A close to idyllic situation, safe from most desert marauders and intruders, yet at the same time precarious and one of endless toil. Carrying water to the higher garden plots had to be an arduous and never-ending task.
Not far below the summit, a tiny mudbrick house stood behind a walled courtyard, partially shaded by acacias. A pigeon-cote stood close by, and four pottery beehives filled a rocky nook overlooking the house. As they approached the building, a wizened old woman vanished through the doorway, leaving a mound of coarse-ground flour beside a grindstone.
“My mother-in-law,” Ahmose said. “Just the two of us left now. Everybody else has gone. My wife, my sons and daughters, my grandchildren. Most are dead, the rest moved away.”
Bak could well understand the reason. Not many people would thrive in so lonely a spot. Though the island offered a rare freedom, few could tolerate so much time alone with their own thoughts.
Imsiba sat cross-legged in the shade and cut the goose into four portions. He rewrapped one in several limp leaves and placed it near the grindstone. Ahmose’s eyes flickered surprise, but he made no comment. The other portions, the Medjay handed around.
“Now, old man,” Bak said, sitting beside his friend, “how long have you been watching these secret meetings in the night?”
“More than a year.” Ahmose wiggled briefly, searching for a softer spot for his bony rear. “Mighty entertaining, they’ve been, and often enlightening.”
“Tell us.” Bak handed him a small, round loaf of bread but held on to a beer jar as if too intent on the answer to think to pass it on. He was certain the old man was the source of Nebamon’s tale, a tale sure to draw either a desert patrol or the police, and he was equally certain Ahmose wanted something in exchange for the information he meant to give.
The old man tore a chunk from the crusty bread, stuffed it into his mouth, and began to chew, stretching the time.
The pigeons swept low overhead, returning from their flight with a whirring of wings, and settled on the courtyard wall, the house, their own house, and the earth. Imsiba covered the fresh-ground grain with a reed mat he found draped over the wall.
“I’m in need of a servant,” Ahmose said. “Someone young and strong, who’ll help tend my vegetables and my flocks.
Someone to carry water when the plants are thirsty and feed the animals when they hunger. Someone to help the old woman with cooking and cleaning, neither of which she can do any longer with skill. Someone to care for the two of us when our strength fails.”
Bak stifled a smile. The request was reasonable, the need probably greater than the old man let on, but he had too much experience to agree too readily. “Until I know what you have to offer, I can do nothing but think on the matter.”
“Two ships, I’ve seen.” Ahmose paused, pretending to sort out his thoughts. His eyes drifted to the beer jar Bak held, then dropped to the portion of goose Imsiba had giv
en him.
“One vessel is small and agile, sailing swift and sure among the rocks, its master a man of the south who can see in the dark and who can tell by the whisper of the water what lies beneath the surface. The other vessel is bigger, a trading ship, the captain a man of Kemet who goes by the name of Roy. He, too, knows these waters, but is hampered by the size of his vessel.”
“You’ve told me nothing I didn’t already know.” Bak looked at the jar as if surprised to see it in his hand, and tossed it to the old man, who caught it with the deftness of a youth. “To earn a reward, you must give me information far more worthy than that.”
Ahmose’s mouth tightened to a thin, stubborn line. “I’m no longer young, Lieutenant, no longer able to protect myself and all that’s mine. If I tell you what you want to hear, how can I be sure the headless man won’t come to slay us? Me and the old woman? How can I know he won’t carry off my animals or leave them to starve?”
Bak exchanged a weary look with Imsiba. The question was fair, but it stretched his patience. Ahmose had gone out of his way to draw them to the island, yet here he was, bargaining as he would for fodder. “Soldiers will be coming tomorrow to tend to Kefia’s farm. I’ll see that they also look after you and yours.”
Ahmose gnawed a mouthful of meat from the leg of the goose and chewed, no doubt waiting for word of this servant he needed. When Bak failed to speak, failed to bend further, he heaved a long, resigned sigh. “I’ve watched the headless man fetch the ox from Kefia’s farm and lead the animal away in the dead of night. Sometimes he meets a ship-the Kushite’s vessel-and he loads a wooden box heavy with contraband onto a sledge, which the ox pulls away. At times his burden is so great he also loads Kefia’s donkeys. They form a caravan and all go off together.”
“And at other times?” Bak demanded.
“Hmmmm!” Imsiba, peeking into the food basket, withdrew a leaf-wrapped package and a small jar. “Sweet cakes and honey.”