Bak broke through the surface of the water and propelled himself into the shallows. The strip of dirt along the river was empty; no one stood among the acacias lining the bank. Relieved that Nofery had not yet come, he hauled himself to his feet and waded to the granite boulder. Grabbing his kilt and loincloth, he darted into the shade beneath the trees. A sparrow fluttered to a higher branch, twittering its displeasure at being disturbed. A lizard scurried across the ground and disappeared beneath a rustling bush. Still dripping, he hurried into his clothing. He had no wish to submit himself to Nofery’s lewd comments should she find him undressed.
He lifted a fishy-smelling package wrapped in leaves from a low, flat boulder and sat down. Through the branches he could see the steep, ill-defined path rising to the top of the long stretch of sand and rock that paralleled the river south of the fortress. He flicked an ant from the bundle and unwrapped it. A dozen limp green onions lay on top of four charred fish mired in a pool of coagulated oil. As unappealing as they were, he was too hungry to care.
He broke the head off a fish, tore the body apart, and began to eat the flesh from its bones. Am I waiting in vain? he wondered. Did Nofery laugh in Hori’s face when he told her what I wanted?
No sooner had he asked himself the question than he heard querulous muttering, the swish of flowing sand, a curse. His eyes darted toward the path. Nofery was about a quarter of the way down, slightly off balance on a slope too unstable to support the weight of her heavy body. Her face was flushed, her ankle-length white sheath was stained with sweat and dust. In one hand she carried a long staff, useless in the sand. In the other, she gripped a good-sized beer jar.
“Don’t sit there with your mouth agape,” she shrieked. “Help me!”
Thanking the lord Amon she had come, Bak dropped the fish on the rock and raced up the slope. She grabbed him by the upper arm, clung as if her very life was at risk, took mincing steps, and whimpered. She was heavier than he had thought, and throughout the descent she did nothing to help herself. If she had not brought the beer, he would have seriously considered drowning her.
Reaching the safe, flat earth at the bottom of the slope, she spouted a flood of grievances. The heat, the long walk from the fortress, the rough desert path, the flies. Wondering how he would ever get her back up the hill, Bak ushered the bulky woman to the rock and moved his midday meal so she could sit.
“When that scribe of yours, that Hori, told me I must visit the house of death…well, I pledged to help you, so I was obliged to go.” She rearranged her huge buttocks on the hard stone. “If he’d told me of the hardships I’d have to endure to meet you here, I’d have thrown him out on his backside.”
“Come now, mistress Nofery!” Bak gave her his most boyish smile. “You wanted to know as much as I the name of the man pulled from the river.”
She snorted as if indifferent, but he could see she could hardly wait to tell him what she had learned. “I care only for the living. A dead man can’t buy my wares or lie with my women.”
“Did you bring the beer to drown your sorrow at losing a customer?” he asked, his eyes twinkling. “Or to thank me for having the good sense to ask you to take a look before any other man or woman?”
Her laugh, coming from deep within, made her many rolls of fat shake like the gel from a well-cooked cut of meat. As the quaking subsided, she could not resist a final complaint. “I tell you this, Officer Bak. The satisfaction of being the first to lay eyes on him was in no way worth the effort it took to get here.”
“Would you prefer all who live in Buhen to know you’re my spy?”
“I’d have little business,” she admitted. “Even my promise to speak highly of your Medjays will cost me much.” Her eyes narrowed, the look on her face turned sly. “I’d be more useful to you if you released me from that vow.”
Bak bent over and patted her cheek. “You must whisper their praises, old woman, not shout their merits to the world. One word spoken with subtlety is worth ten shoved down a man’s throat.”
Nofery’s sigh was so exaggerated, so deep and long, Bak imagined her fleshy body shrinking to a twig. Shaking off the image, he sat on the ground in front of her, folded his legs, and laid his food on his crossed ankles.
“Tell me, Nofery, who was he?”
She hesitated and he saw the temptation on her face to bargain favor for favor. The stern look he gave her, along with her eagerness to relate what she knew, overcame her desire to negotiate.
“His name was Heby,” she said. “He came to my place of business perhaps once a month.”
“I must offer a plump goose to the lord Amon,” Bak said, smiling with relief. “I feared you wouldn’t know him.”
“I recognized him, yes, but as for knowing him? I doubt if any man did.” She unplugged the jar, took a deep drink from it, and passed it to Bak. “Most men come to relax after a long day and they wish to enjoy the company of others. He came to drink and to relieve himself with my women. He seldom spoke, never smiled, held all men at arm’s length.”
Bak inhaled the aroma seeping from the jar’s mouth, nodded his approval, and took a healthy drink. “He had no friends?”
“Who would befriend so sullen a man?”
Bak finished the fish and began to eat another. The lord Amon had given him the wisdom to send Nofery to the house of death; why then would he not provide the answers he needed? “Did he ever say what he did to put bread in his mouth?”
“He told me nothing, but another man did. One who worked by his side day after day.” She drank from the jar a second time, taking so much, Bak wondered if any remained for him. “Heby was a goldsmith, one who melted the ore brought from the mines. The scars Hori told me to look for, those on his arms, were old burns, as you thought. He’d been spattered by molten metal.”
Bak pictured the ingot hidden in his bedchamber and chided himself for being so blind. Who but a goldsmith would have had the skill and the tools to melt down the ore and mold it? Who would be in a better position to steal?
“Yes,” Neferperet said in a hoarse voice. “Yes, it’s Heby.”
He backed away from the thigh-high stone embalming table, his eyes locked on the naked body lying in the deep tray carved into its upper surface. Neferperet was a big man, heavy and muscular, a man of thirty or so years respected for his strength, but during the short time he had been in the house of death, his face had turned a sickly green. Bak suspected his own visage looked no healthier. The hot, clammy air, the suffocating odor, the eerie shadows trembling in the lamplight assaulted the senses and made him feel as if he had already set one foot in the netherworld.
Neferperet swallowed hard, swung around, and rushed past a table containing the body of an old man, stomach slit barely enough to admit a hand, innards lying in a stone bowl on the floor. He plowed through the door and vanished from sight. Bak, close behind, got no farther than the portal, where his path was barred by Min, the freckled, red-haired scribe responsible for maintaining the records in the house of death.
“We need more than his name, Officer Bak,” Min said, his manner officious.
Bak edged past him into the adjoining room, crossed to the far wall, and stopped beside a deep stack of sparkling white, neatly folded linen. Even there, he could not evade the smell of death, the taste.
“I doubt Neferperet went beyond the courtyard,” he said, working hard not to show his discomfort. “He’s the chief goldsmith, the man Heby toiled for.”
Min screwed up his mouth in disapproval. “I’ve no interest in the slain man’s personal habits, sir. I need to know of his family and the way they wish him to be prepared for eternity.”
“Men talk of death as well as life while they toil.” Bak sidled to the door that would take him out of the building. His eyes darted toward another room. On a table similar to the one Heby occupied, he saw a form cocooned in natron, the white salty substance used to dry the body. Nakht, he thought.
“We can do nothing on word of mouth alone,” Min snapped. “You must go immediately to the scribal office building and return with his personal record. Only then will we know for a fact whether he’s to be fully prepared for interment in a tomb in Kemet or left as he is for immediate burial here.”
Bak wondered if this self-important scribe was always so impertinent or if he had heard the gossip about the Medjays and thought he could behave as he liked with their officer. “I have much to do,” he said curtly. “I’ll have the record brought to you when I can, possibly today, more likely tomorrow.”
He pivoted and hurried along a short corridor to the exit. The courtyard, though shaded by sycamores and palms along each wall, was as hot as the inside of a cooking pot simmering on a brazier, but at least the air was free of stench. He allowed himself the luxury of several deep breaths before crossing to Neferperet, seated in the shade on a mudbrick bench beside a small fish pool. A dozen fingerling perch darted among the stems of a lotus plant beneath open white blossoms floating among the leaves on the water’s surface.
The goldsmith stared at his scarred, work-hardened hands, clasped tight between his knees. “I thought myself a man, but after this…”
“Say no more. Those who toil here seem not to mind, but I, for one, have neither the nose nor the stomach for the house of death.”
Bak sat beside Neferperet and bent over the pool, allowing the sweet scent of the flowers to drive away the odor clinging to his nostrils. He was sure Heby had stolen the gold, but he needed proof. From what he had seen of Tetynefer, the steward would prefer to believe a foreign woman guilty of murder rather than admit that gold taken from beneath his very nose had brought about two deaths. Bak was also convinced Heby had been slain because of the gold. But one who made no friends would never be tempted to confide, so who had learned his secret? This man Neferperet? Or another who toiled in the same workshop?
“What can you tell me of Heby?” he asked.
“He was a skilled craftsman and a diligent worker. He…” Neferperet hesitated, gave a too elaborate shrug, smiled. “He was like any other man who knows his craft well.”
“He was friendly and good-humored? Well-liked and respected by all who knew him?”
The goldsmith’s smile thinned. “He wasn’t a man to make friends easily, but…yes, he was respected.”
“I’ve heard him called sullen.”
Neferperet’s laugh held no humor. “I should’ve known you’d talk to others before me.”
Bak made no comment, letting the goldsmith think what he would. A breath of warm air, the first all day, caressed his moist forehead. The leaves on the trees danced and whispered. A bee buzzed in an arc over the pool to land on a fragrant blossom and bury itself in pollen. A tiny green frog, no bigger than a thumbnail, leaped from one leaf to another and splashed into the water.
“You heard right,” Neferperet admitted. “I wished many times I had ten men with his skill and none with his disposition.”
“Had he no friends among the other goldsmiths?”
“They’re an easygoing lot and they tried, but he’d have none of it. So they let him go his own way. None will mourn him, I can tell you.”
“And you?”
Neferperet frowned at his callused hands, rubbed them together. “I’m sorry he met so violent an end and sorrier to lose so skilled a worker, but as for the man himself?” He shrugged. “He did his task well and he knew it. He wanted no other to tell him what must be done.”
“Yet as his superior,” Bak prompted, “you couldn’t let him do as he pleased all the time.”
“I put up with him for a week and then…” The goldsmith balled his right hand into a fist and held it up. “He was heavier than I am, but older and softer. I taught him to listen.”
“How long ago was that?”
“One year, no more.”
It took all Bak’s will to contain his excitement. According to the scrolls Azzia had given him, the stealing had begun a year ago. He eyed Neferperet, who seemed as honest and open as Hori’s puppy. As chief goldsmith, he should have noticed something amiss. Yet he had reported no thefts, no suspicions. Which meant he was not as innocent as he seemed or Heby’s method of taking the gold was so clever that a master craftsman had been deceived. If so, how could he, Bak, hope to learn how it was done?
Shaking off self-doubt, he asked, “What brought Heby to Buhen? I’d think so skilled a craftsman would’ve toiled in Waset for the royal house.”
“A man like him in so exalted a place?” Neferperet laughed, contemptuous. “He’d have lasted less than a week.”
Bak heard the quick patter of approaching footsteps. Min, looking none too happy, was hurrying across the courtyard.
The scribe stopped at the edge of the pool. “Sir, will you speak without delay to the man who holds Heby’s personal record?” All pretense of authority had vanished.
“I’ll go when I have the time.”
“Today, I beg you! If he’s not to be embalmed, if he’s to be laid to rest in a local cemetery…” Min hesitated, flushed a bright crimson. “With the days so hot…you must understand, sir. He cannot long be kept here.”
Bak smothered a smile. “You’ll have my message before the sun drops below the fortress wall.”
Min thanked him profusely and hurried back inside.
He had barely vanished from sight when Neferperet began to laugh. “It seems those who toil in the house of death have no more stomach for it than we.”
Bak’s laughter was short-lived. A visit to the scribal offices would lead to an interview with Tetynefer, an interview he dreaded. He had reported at first light the intruder in the commandant’s residence, and the steward had been none too pleased to hear a Medjay guard had failed to perform his duty. How would he react when he learned a Medjay spear had been found in Heby’s breast?
Bak refused to dwell on that. “How was Heby yesterday?”
“Sullen.” Neferperet appeared to like the word. “Sullen, as always.”
Bak tried to imagine how he would feel if he planned to enter and search a building inhabited by four people and guarded by a policeman. “Did he act like a man afraid, or one whose thoughts were on another task or in another place?”
The goldsmith hunched over to stare at the pool. “He was sullen as usual, but…” Having found the words he sought, he nodded. “Yes, he was like the lions the men of Kush bring in cages from far to the south. He struck out in anger at all who came near.”
A man might show anger, Bak thought, to convince himself he’s not afraid.
“The rage was at himself, and with good reason,” Neferperet went on. “He worked like a boy new at the furnace, and for a man like him who expected much of himself…” He shook his head, troubled by the memory. “Our scribe won’t soon forget the tongue-lashing he got each time he told Heby the scales didn’t balance.”
“He poured too little in the molds?” Bak asked, taking care to show no more than average interest.
“Two molds he filled weighed light, one weighed heavy. Another he overflowed, and, I know not how, he cracked it so it can no longer be used.” He shook his head in disbelief. “He dropped another and broke it to pieces. Can you imagine a man so skilled being so clumsy?”
Heby was thinking not of his day’s work, Bak was sure, but of the night ahead and the danger he faced. Of a search that could stretch for hours, with so many documents to read. Read? A craftsman who could read? Bak’s heart turned to stone.
“Could Heby read and write?” he asked.
Neferperet stared as if Bak had lost his senses. “Heby? Surely you tickle my feet with a feather. What need would a goldsmith have for learning?”
“Of course!” Bak smacked the palm of his hand hard against the crenelated wall. “Heby wasn’t alone in taking the gold. He couldn’t have been!”
Feeling somewhat foolish for speaking aloud, he glanced to right and left. No one had heard. He stood by himself atop the massive towered gate that opened onto the western desert. The nearest sentry was more than fifty paces away. Others ambled along the wall at much greater distances. Muted voices and the sound of a whiny dog drifted up from the city behind him. The odor of manure from the donkey paddocks and fowl pens came and went with the breeze.
Rubbing his stinging hand, he stared westward across the desert, an undulating landscape of sand and rocks. No creature stirred, but the earth itself appeared alive. The sand, bleached a pale beige beneath the lord Re’s baleful eye, seemed to quiver around the gray-black rocks. At irregular intervals, gusts of air lifted the finer grains and sent them hurtling across the surface like a low, vaporous blanket, which fell back to rest as each gust subsided.
He should have gone directly to Tetynefer, but he had needed time to sort out his thoughts before facing the steward, and sort them out he would now that he had come to his senses.
Heby would not have been able to tell one scroll from another; therefore, he must have gone to Nakht’s private rooms to look for the gold while another man, one who could read, had gone through the documents below. Since less than half had been disturbed, that second intruder must have fled from Nakht’s office when Azzia screamed. Bak cursed aloud, certain he had missed him by a hair when he ran up the stairway to help her.
Obviously, she had not told Heby or his accomplice the gold and scrolls were no longer in the commandant’s residence. Bak was sure she could have sent a message, even with Ruru looking on, if she had wanted to. And she had hurled the spear at Heby. Both actions proclaimed her innocence, and relief flooded through him. Another thought washed away the glow: she could have turned her back on the pair, hoping to save herself. Maybe Heby had confronted her and…
No more! he thought. Each time she enters my thoughts, they go around and around until I’m dizzy. I must plant my feet on firmer ground.
Heby, Neferperet had said, had been clever with his hands but none too bright, so the other man must have devised the scheme for stealing the gold. When they met after running from the commandant’s residence, that man must have realized the wound in Heby’s shoulder would attract too much attention, too many questions the goldsmith would sooner or later be made to answer. To protect himself, that second man had silenced Heby forever.
Using a spear from the police arsenal.
Who is he? Bak wondered. His thoughts returned to his former suspects: Nebwa, Paser, Mery, and Harmose. Which of the four-if any of them-was the guilty man, and how would he ever find proof? He stared at the desert, his expression stony. With Heby dead, the trail to his confederate was smudged, like the windswept track leading across the sands from the gate on which he stood. But wherever a man walked, traces remained through eternity. I’ll follow those traces, he vowed, until I lay my hands on the second man, Heby’s slayer and Nakht’s. No more will I think of giving up or reporting the stolen gold to Tetynefer. This task is mine alone.
“So you’ve finally come!” Tetynefer said, his tone waspish. “I expected you long ago, as soon as you returned from Dedu’s village.”
The steward was seated on a high-backed chair, feet on a low stool, baton of office in hand, giving the appearance of a petty nobleman accepting petitions in a provincial court. Moisture dotted his forehead; a rivulet flowed down his chest between drooping pads of flesh, which, in a woman, would have swollen to breasts. His writing implements and a half-dozen scrolls lay on a table to his right.
“I had to learn who the slain man was,” Bak said.
“He was a man of Kemet,” Tetynefer snapped, “a man whose life and death are my responsibility. I should’ve sent a courier to the viceroy the instant his body was carried within these walls.”
Bak’s hand tightened on the door frame, but he let no hint of irritation touch his voice. “I would’ve thought, before you sent a message, you’d want to know as much as possible about him.”
“This fortress has soldiers without number, young man, and they’re all at my disposal. I can send as many couriers as I choose, one each hour of the day if necessary.”
Bak pictured a line of messengers, one following another like beads on a cord, making the long voyage downriver. He was sure the viceroy, a seasoned commander in the army, would not be overjoyed at seeing so many fighting men so ill used.
The steward plucked a blank scroll from the table, spread it across his lap, and chose a reed pen from several stored in the slot of his scribal pallet. “Death is not uncommon in Buhen, as you well know, but always before, it’s been the result of accident, sickness, warfare, or brawl. Now, in just three days and nights, the commandant has been slain, his residence invaded by a thief, and a valued craftsman stabbed to death by a villager, a Medjay.” He aimed the tip of the pen at Bak and gave him a censorious look, as if Bak were personally responsible. “The viceroy won’t be pleased, I can tell you.”
Bak barely noticed. He was too surprised the steward had not heard the murder weapon had come from the police arsenal.
Tetynefer dipped his pen in the ink and poised it over the scroll. “Tell me all you know of this man and how he died. Be quick. A courier must leave before nightfall.”
“His name was Heby,” Bak said. “He was born in the village of Iuny. According to his personal record he, like his father before him, roamed the length of Kemet, making fine jewelry and accessories for the noble families. His skill was praised, but he was surly in temperament and not well liked. A year ago, he came here to the goldsmith’s workshop.”
If Tetynefer thought it strange a man would choose the tedious task of smelting ore over the far more satisfying task of creating beautiful objects, he gave no indication.
“He was close-mouthed,” Bak went on, “and seldom talked about himself. When he came to Buhen he claimed to be a man alone, no mother, no father, no wife. With no one to provide for his afterlife, he’ll be buried here and soon forgotten.”
“So be it,” Tetynefer said, shrugging.
Bak hoped when his own time came to go to the netherworld, his life would not be dismissed so easily. He turned the thought aside and went on with his report, describing where the body had been found and how.
“The one who slew him?” Tetynefer asked, looking up from the scroll. “Did he slink away to his wretched cousins in the desert, thinking to escape our justice?”
“No villager took Heby’s life. He was slain upstream, well to the south of where his body was found.”
The steward raised an eyebrow, chuckled. “Did you see the weapon being thrust into his breast, Officer Bak? Or have you allowed toothless old Dedu to turn your head with his lies?”
Bak struggled to suppress his resentment. “I spoke with a fisherman who knows the river and its currents. He said that at this time of year, anything dropped in the water upstream from this fortress is swept around the quay and back toward the riverbank near Dedu’s village.” Seeing doubt on the steward’s puffy face, he added, “I’ve sent two of my men up the river to look for signs of a struggle. With luck, they’ll find blood and the broken shaft of the spear we found in Heby’s breast.”
Tetynefer drew a square of linen from his belt and patted the sweat from his face. “I’ve been told that a Medjay spear was used. It may not be apparent to you, young man, but it’s very clear to me. A villager slew the craftsman, and are not the villagers Medjays?”
“It was a spear made in Kemet,” Bak said doggedly. “After I chased Heby from the commandant’s residence, I believe he met another man who lives within the walls of this city, and that that man took his life.”
“Heby was the man Mistress Azzia wounded?”
“Yes. His shoulder was gashed to the bone.”
The steward patted his neck and his bald head, saying nothing, deep in thought. Bak shifted from foot to foot, dreading the time when he must admit the spear was from his own arsenal.
At last, Tetynefer nodded, and a smile spread across his face. His eyes found Bak’s. “Good. Very good.”
Bak was certain the man had lost his senses.
Tetynefer tucked a corner of the damp linen into his belt, took up his pen, and began to write. “With mistress Azzia shortly to appear before the viceroy for taking her husband’s life, and with the man who broke into the commandant’s residence dead at the hands of an unknown Medjay who used a spear he pilfered from…yes, from one of our caravans, while the men lay sleeping…” He paused and tilted his head to admire the wet black ink glittering on the creamy papyrus. “Yes, the viceroy will be pleased indeed at our speedy resolution of these vile crimes.”
“Heby was slain,” Bak said in a hard, stiff voice, “with a spear stolen from my police arsenal. A rumor is spreading through Buhen that his life was taken by one of my men.”
Tetynefer sat rigid in his chair, the good humor draining from his face. A tight smile formed on his lips and he dipped the pen into the ink. “At the moment, I see no reason to distress the viceroy with petty details. The spear was stolen; it matters not from where it was taken.”
Bak felt uncomfortable with the lie, but bowed his head in acceptance. Better to let the steward make himself look good to the viceroy than to insist on the truth and put his men in jeopardy.
Tetynefer raised his pen and pointed it at Bak. “However, you must get the truth from your wretched Medjays and bring forth the one who slew Heby. Waste no time lest I be forced by circumstance to report all I know.”
“None is guilty of murder, that I swear to the lord Amon.”
“Hear me out!” Tetynefer snapped. “I want the guilty one’s name before you take mistress Azzia to Ma’am. He must not be given time to slay half the men posted to this garrison.”