“Two senior architects are responsible for the project: Pashed and Montu.” Amonked hastened up the wide causeway, setting a pace few men could maintain for long.
The four porters bearing the carrying chair he had spurned hurried along behind. Bak had spotted them more than once wiping their brows in an exaggerated manner and exchanging glances of mock exhaustion, and not because of the midday heat. They were registering a good-natured acceptance of their master’s refusal to ride. An idiosyncrasy among those who walked the corridors of power.
“Two very different men,” Amonked went on. “Pashed is sensible and reliable, as firm as a rock. Montu is as slippery as the snake you’d find under that rock. Both are equally competent in their tasks, and both should be credited for all you’ll see before you today.”
Surprised, Bak asked, “Is not Senenmut, our sovereign’s favorite, the architect responsible for Djeser Djeseru?” The instant Bak uttered the word “favorite,” he regretted the slip.
It was common usage among ordinary people when speaking of Senenmut, but he doubted it was aired above a whisper by denizens of the royal house. Too disrespectful by far.
Looking amused, Amonked said, “He has overall charge, yes, but the project is large and he has a multitude of other important and time-consuming duties.”
“Thus you’ve been given the task of relieving his burden.”
“So it would seem.”
“I see.” Bak knew he should let the matter drop, but a twinkle in his companion’s eye prompted him to go on. “I’ve heard many times that he alone created the unique design of Djeser Djeseru. Is that not true?”
Amonked’s laugh hinted at cynicism. “The ruined memorial temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep lies beside that of Maatkare Hatshepsut. You can look down upon it from my cousin’s new structure. After you’ve seen it, I’ll tell you of Senenmut’s initial plan for Djeser Djeseru.”
Bak looked up the long, sloping causeway toward the distant construction site. The broad smooth path allowed materials and equipment to be hauled from a canal at its lower end to the upper reaches of the valley floor, an undulating landscape of golden sand nestled within a natural bay, a curving sweep of high cliffs with tower-like projections of varying height cut from the face by erosion. When building the causeway, sandy mounds and rock protuberances had been leveled and the low ground filled to make the ascent smooth and straight, the grade easy. Later, a small temple would be built at the lower end and the path would be paved and walled. Stone lions with the faces of Maatkare Hatshepsut would line either side of the walkway.
From so low a perspective, he could see only a portion of the temple at the far end of the valley, where the cliff reached its highest point. A lower terrace, divided at the center by a ramp, was partially lined with pale limestone columns. A second, higher terrace had about half the columns in place at either end. The structure was being built along the base of a steep slope of rock fallen from the soaring cliffs that formed a golden brown backdrop. Bak was impressed. The setting could not have been more spectacular-or more befitting a mighty sovereign of the land of Kemet.
To the south and on lower ground, broken columns and a tumbled mound of stone stood atop a sandswept terrace, the ancient ruined temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. Bak had
played among those columns as a child, brought into the valley by his father’s housekeeper, who had come sometimes to bend a knee at a shrine to the lady Hathor. The valley had been quiet during that long ago time, a place of adoration. If the rising dust ahead told a true tale, he would find no peace and tranquillity now.
“Does Senenmut come here often?”
“As I said before, my young friend, he’s a busy man.”
Amonked’s mouth twitched. “A very busy man.”
Bak, letting out a long, slow breath of relief, barely noticed the humor. Senenmut was no more a friend of his than was Maatkare Hatshepsut.
“As you can see, the sanctuary is nearly complete.”
The senior architect, Pashed, stood aside so Bak could look the length of the long, narrow chamber that had been dug into the hillside. The enclosed space smelled of the four men inside, sweating in the heat, toiling in sunlight reflected from outside by means of a mirror. They barely glanced at the newcomer. They were too preoccupied with adding color to the shallow reliefs that adorned the walls, images of Maatkare Hatshepsut making offerings to various deities.
Bak did not tarry. He would have plenty of time to see details later.
“The same may be said of the memorial chapels to our sovereign and her father,” Pashed said, hurrying on with his admittedly perfunctory tour of the construction site. He was a short, slight man of forty or so years whose brow was stamped by the deep wrinkles of an individual perpetually harried by life.
“Where’s Montu?” Amonked asked. “I want Lieutenant Bak to meet him.”
The architect slipped around a ramp of rubble at the end of an unfinished segment of portico, which when finished would surround the open court at the heart of the temple.
Several architraves and roofing slabs lay at the foot of the ramp, waiting to be positioned atop twin rows of sixteen-sided columns. About half the portico was complete. Large limestone drums that would be stacked to form additional columns were scattered around the open floor in the center.
Wall niches to either side of the sanctuary door stood empty, awaiting the placement of statues of Maatkare Hatshepsut.
The work lay dormant, with not a man in sight. Bak could not understand the lack of activity.
Pashed’s voice grew taut, censorious. “I haven’t seen him today.”
“I spoke to him last week.” Amonked made no attempt to hide his irritation. “Apparently my warning did no good.”
Bak glanced at the two men. Anger and discontent were far more likely causes of accidents than malign spirits, and Amonked wanted him to meet Montu. Did he suspect the missing architect of disrupting the work, not with intent, but out of neglect?
Mouth clamped tight, Pashed stalked through an open portal on the south side of the courtyard. Bak found himself in an as yet unadorned anteroom off which two doorways opened. A pair of carefully placed mirrors caught the sunlight reflected from a mirror outside and sent it into two inner rooms.
“Maatkare Hatshepsut’s memorial chapel and that of her father,” the architect told Bak, his tone waspish.
Ignoring the anger, aware it was not directed at him, Bak dutifully peeked into the two chambers. Inside the smaller room, three men were painstakingly carving delicate reliefs of food offerings on the walls, while five painters were toiling in the larger, applying bright colors to carved proces-sions of servants bearing offerings of fruits and vegetables, beef and fowl. Though Bak appeared indifferent to the discussion in the anteroom, he missed not a word.
“Montu claimed his country estate takes up much of his time,” Amonked said.
“The property isn’t his. It belongs to his wife, inherited from a previous husband.” Pashed sniffed. “The sole task that occupies him is ordering her around. Her and her daughter and the scribe who’s managed the estate since long before they were wed. They’re the ones who toil alongside the servants, not him.”
“His duty is here, and here he must come each day. And so I told him.”
Noticing Bak standing at the chapel door, waiting to move on, Pashed beckoned. “Come. I’ll take you to the shrine of the lord Re.”
He led them outside and along the incomplete wall at the front of the court. A break in the center wide enough to admit the large sledges on which stones were hauled would someday be made into a portal. A granite lintel and jambs lay nearby, waiting to be installed. Bak eyed the broken wall and half-finished portico, astounded that the court was not a beehive of activity. Why was the task not proceeding?
“I’m tempted to have Montu sent north to toil on the shrine of the lady Pakhet,” Amonked said. Pakhet was a fierce lion-headed provincial goddess, and the new building was located in the desert west of the province’s very rural capital. Not a place a man accustomed to life in sophisti-cated Waset would wish to go.
Pashed’s laugh carried an edge of meanness. “I can think of no task more fitting.”
Passing through a doorway at the north side of the court, the architect hurried them through an anteroom whose roof was supported by four sixteen-sided columns and into a large chamber in which ten steps rose up the side of a high altar dedicated to the lord Re. The room was open to the sky, allowing the priests to commune freely with the deity. Here again Maatkare Hatshepsut, depicted in fine, brightly colored reliefs, was shown making offerings.
“This shrine is complete except for statues of our sovereign that will be placed here and in the anteroom,” Pashed said.
The trio returned to the courtyard, where Bak stopped to look around. “Djeser Djeseru has been under construction for five long years, Pashed, and still this upper level is in-38
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complete. Why do you not have men here, finishing the portico?” Bak spoke more sharply than he intended, but Amonked’s nod of agreement told him he had not stepped beyond the bounds expected of him.
“The workmen. .” Pashed hesitated, glanced at Amonked, said, “All right, you’ve come to learn the reason for our many unfortunate accidents, so you may as well hear the truth.” He paused, screwed up his face to show distaste.
“The men fear a malign spirit. They spend more time looking over their shoulders and listening to whispered tales of lights in the dark and shadows where none should fall than in performing the tasks for which they receive their daily bread.”
“They believe this part of the temple more fearful than the rest?”
Pashed flung his head up in a superior manner. “If that were the case, neither artists nor sculptors would toil here, would they?”
“There’s some truth in what Pashed says,” Amonked told Bak, “but he’s failed to mention another obstacle in the way of progress. Senenmut has several times changed the plan.
He’s thinking now of making this open court a columned hall. Thus the work has stopped, awaiting his decision.”
Looking distinctly uncomfortable, Pashed clamped his mouth tight, refusing to admit he had skirted around a part of the truth rather than lay blame on the man to whom he owed his well-being.
Amonked, his thoughts masked, eyed the architect briefly, then turned away, led his companions out of the building, and stopped at the top of the mudbrick and debris ramp up which materials and equipment were hauled to this upper, most sacred part of the temple.
The view was glorious: the hot, sunny bay nestled at the foot of the cliffs and, in the distance, a patchwork of brown and golden fields, of green garden plots and palm groves, marking the broad strip of farmland along the river, made in-distinct by the heat haze.
They were standing on the upper terrace Bak had seen from afar, in reality a portico which, when completed, would span the front of the temple. The twin rows of columns, square in front, sixteen-sided behind, covered by roof slabs, were split into two segments by the wide gap in the center, yet to be completed. Two oversized painted statues of Maatkare Hatshepsut in the form of the lord Osiris had been erected against the two northernmost ex-terior columns. Similar images would be placed all along the portico, looking out across the valley for all the world to see.
Bak looked down upon the unfinished, lower colonnade he had glimpsed from the causeway. To either side of the ramp, which he assumed would ultimately be finished as a stairway, two rows of columns were being erected to form a portico. Just a few at each end had been built to their full height, with roof slabs in place. The roof of this lower portico, when completed, would form a broad, open terrace in front of the upper colonnade, which stood above and slightly behind the retaining wall that contained the earth on which the temple was being built.
In front of the lower colonnade, the sloping terrain had been leveled to form a flattish surface, a terrace of sorts. To the north, the high side of the valley floor and a part of the fairly steep slope at the base of the cliff were being cut away and a retaining wall built to hold back the hillside. Another retaining wall was being built to the south to hold in place the dirt and debris shifted from north to south to build up the low side of the terrace.
Raw stone newly taken from the quarry, and roughly shaped blocks whose purpose was impossible to guess, shared the terrace with stone cubes to be made into square columns, drums to become sixteen-sided columns, rectangular slabs for lintels and jambs, architraves and roof slabs.
Scattered here and there, sometimes singly and sometimes in groups, were dozens of statues of Maatkare Hatshepsut in various stages of sculpting, from roughed-out blocks of stone to nearly complete sitting or standing figures or images of reclining human-headed lions. To the east, where the terrace fell away to merge into the landscape, the remains of an old mudbrick temple, neglected and crumbling, was gradually being consumed as the terrace was extended.
Scattered among the stones were the craftsmen who were shaping and polishing parts of columns and statuary, and the workmen who provided unskilled labor. The skilled artisans dwelt in villages outside the valley along the edge of the floodplain, while the other men lived in huts built in a shallow hollow between Djeser Djeseru and the ancient temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. These men had come from throughout the land of Kemet, men whose crops had been gathered, leaving them free to serve their sovereign. They had been pressed into duty to haul stones, dig ditches, build walls, whatever they had to do to pay off their debts or those of the noblemen on whose lands they lived, or to repay with labor offenses against the lady Maat.
To either side of the terrace, men toiled at the retaining walls, those to the north cutting away the slope, those to the south shaping and placing the stone blocks. A ragged line of youths carried dirt and debris by the basketful from the high side of the terrace to the low. Other boys walked among the men with donkeys, carrying skins of water. Well over a hundred men and boys whistling, laughing, calling out to each other, or talking among themselves. None afraid of malign spirits, at least in the light of day.
A nearly naked man, a workman if the dust and sweat covering his body told true, raced up the rubble ramp down which materials were moved from the terrace to the men building the southern retaining wall. He sped through the clutter of stones, drawing every eye, silencing the laughter and talk. Clearly agitated, he stopped among the columns below. “Pashed! Sir! I must speak with you, sir. Right away!”
The architect looked at the workman and at Amonked, his face a picture of indecision. Amonked was an important man, while the workman’s message might well be as urgent as he appeared to believe it was.
“Go to him,” Amonked said. “We’ll await you here.”
Pashed hurried away with the workman, both soon to vanish behind the southern retaining wall.
“Another accident?” Bak asked.
“I pray not.”
They strode to the southern end of the unfinished colonnade and tried to see where Pashed had gone. Thanks to the vagaries of construction, they could look down upon a new shrine to the lady Hathor and the four men laying foundation stones, but the incomplete segment of wall that would close off the end of the colonnade blocked their view of the area along the base of the retaining wall. They saw a dozen or so workmen standing about, looking toward the wall and talking among themselves, but Pashed was nowhere to be seen.
With Amonked unwilling to intrude unless summoned, Bak resigned himself to waiting.
Standing on the edge of the terrace, he looked across the workmen’s huts to the ruined memorial temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. It was as he remembered it, yet vastly different. The mound of rubble in the center was lower, the remaining columns had decreased in number and fewer were standing, none to their original height. Two men scrambled among the ruins, and even from a distance he could see they were searching for stone that could be recut and reused. A small crew of workmen levered the blocks the pair selected onto wooden rockers, which they used to raise the stones onto sledges. These were towed by another team of men from the old temple to the new.
Amonked pointed toward the center of the ruin. “You see the mound of stones that might once have been a pyramid-
or whatever it was? The three rows of fallen and broken columns that once formed a covered walkway around the mound? The wall enclosing those columns?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That, my young friend, is exactly the plan Senenmut started with. Same size, same shape, but set well forward of the older temple. Clearly his inspiration was not unique.”
Bak had the distinct impression that Amonked did not share his cousin’s affection for Senenmut.
“Was the building ever started?”
“Over a hundred men toiled here for several months.
When they went home to harvest their crops, he altered his plan. I’m not sure why. My cousin came out here, and perhaps she suggested something more worthy, more unique.”
“Sir!” The same workman who had come for Pashed stood among the columns below. “Pashed wishes you to come right away, sir. You and Lieutenant Bak. The matter is urgent, he said, most urgent.”
“Bata found a body in an ancient tomb.” Pashed flung a hasty look at a reed-thin workman who was shaking so badly another man had to hold a beer jar to his lips. The architect was standing in front of a rough hole in the sand that opened near the end of the incomplete retaining wall. He looked gray around the mouth, beleaguered. “A man struck down from behind.”
Bak knew no man long dead and buried would rouse such strong reactions. “The body is fresh?”
“So it looked to me.”
“Who is he?” Amonked demanded.
“I don’t know. I didn’t draw close. Nor did Bata, so he says.”
Bak thanked the lord Amon. With luck he might find some sign of the slayer. Or maybe he should thank the so-called malign spirit for holding back all who would otherwise have trampled over the scene.
“I’ll need a good, strong light,” he said, eyeing the dark opening.
The short, stout foreman responsible for building the wall, Seked by name, sent a workman off to get a fresh torch. The foreman’s grim expression and a tendency to rub the ugly scar running across his forehead betrayed his outward calm as a sham.
Bak glanced at the onlookers standing well back in a loose half circle: Bata’s fellow workmen, a dozen or more sweat-stained men, whose faces registered equal measures of excitement and alarm. Coming at a fast pace across the sand were the men he had seen removing stones from the ancient temple. Others were gathering along the top of the retaining wall. By end of day, every man at Djeser Djeseru would have told the tale over and over again, each time embellishing it. Bak took care to conceal his annoyance; if he was to resolve the problem of the malign spirit, he would need their goodwill.
He walked close to the hole into which he must go and looked into the black void. Located at the edge of the mound of dirt and debris that formed the terrace, it was directly in the path of the retaining wall. The sand around it was hard-packed. He guessed the tomb had been open for some time and the men had concluded they had nothing to fear from whatever was inside.
“Why did Bata enter the tomb?” he asked.
Seked stepped forward. “We needed to go on with the retaining wall, sir. We thought to fill the shaft today so we could build over it.”
“I gave them permission,” Pashed said. “The tomb was never completed or used, so we had no need to summon a priest to offer prayers.”
The foreman flung a bleak look at the dark opening. “I thought it best that we send a man down before we filled it. I feared some lazy workman might’ve slipped inside to take a nap.”
Bak nodded. He, too, would have wanted to be sure no man was trapped below. “Someone must go down with me,”
he said, giving Pashed a pointed look, “one who knows by sight most of the men who toil within this valley.”
Pashed nodded slowly, reluctantly.
The workman hurried back with a flaming torch. Bak took the light and strode to the tomb. No hesitation for him. No time to let grow within his heart the tiny grain of apprehension he felt. No time to give the onlookers the satisfaction of thinking he might share their superstitious fears.
Holding the light before him, he picked his way down a steep flight of irregular steps, keeping his head low so he would not bump the rough-cut ceiling. He could hear Pashed’s heavy breathing behind him. The tunnel at the bottom, its roof so low he had to hunch down, leveled out and turned gradually to the right. It was less than two paces wide, the air close and hot. He held the flame near the floor, looking at the footprints in the thin layer of fine sand that covered the stone. Two sets of prints coming and going, one shod, the other bare, those of Pashed and Bata, he felt sure.
If any other prints had been left, they had unwittingly destroyed them. At times, he glimpsed short straight indenta-tions near the walls. At first they puzzled him but then he realized they were the remains of tracks left by the wooden runners of a sledge.
At least two dozen paces beyond the steps, he saw the body, a man lying on his side, facing the rough wall that marked the far end of the shaft. The back of the head was matted and bloody, dark and glistening in the torchlight. The smell of death, though not strong, was pervasive. Bata’s prints and those of Pashed ended where Bak stood, where they had glimpsed the dead man and fled.
He walked slowly forward, examining the floor. Except for one indentation no longer than his hand left by the sledge, the sand was smooth and unmarked. The slayer had brushed away his tracks. Kneeling beside the body, he looked back. Pashed hovered several paces away, sweat streaming down his face. The shaft was hot, but not that hot.
The architect was afraid.
Turning back to the dead man, Bak’s eyes fell on the head, the crown crushed and broken, a mass of dried blood and flesh crawling with flies. The body was limp, the pallid flesh beginning to swell. The man had been dead for some time, or had he? In the warmth of the tomb the process of decay would be faster. He could have been slain as recently as the night before.
“Who is he?” Pashed whispered.
Sucking in his breath, Bak laid his hands on the lifeless form and rolled the dead man onto his back. Flies rose in a cloud. Bak swallowed hard and forced himself to concentrate on the man’s appearance. He was of medium height and of middle years, with fading good looks and muscles going to fat. He wore the long kilt of a scribe and elaborate, probably costly, multicolored bead jewelry.
“Come forward, Pashed. You must tell me his name.” After a long silence, he heard the whisper of sandals approaching across the sand.
The architect bent over, stared. “May the gods be blessed.
It’s Montu.”
What a strange thing to say, Bak thought. “Are you sure?”
“We’ve toiled together here at Djeser Djeseru for over five years. I’d know him anywhere.”
“Montu.” Amonked sighed. “I can’t say I liked the man, but to die like that. . An abomination.”
Bak eyed the half circle of men standing well back from the mouth of the tomb. From the size of the crowd, he guessed every man at Djeser Djeseru had abandoned his task to come and see for himself what had happened. Most men spoke together in hushed voices, speculating about the dead man and his manner of death. A few at the front of the circle were silent, trying to hear what the police officer and the Storekeeper of Amon were saying.
“Are you certain he didn’t fall and strike his head on a projecting stone?” Amonked asked, not for the first time.
“He was murdered, sir, struck down from behind.”
Amonked glanced at the onlookers. “I fear the men will see this as another in the series of accidents we’ve had. More serious, of course, but one among many. Are you sure. .?”
“There was nothing in the tomb against which he could’ve fallen, sir. The floor was smooth, and the walls, though rough, had no protrusions so large they’d damage his head in such a way.” Bak could see that Amonked was unconvinced or, more likely, did not want to believe. “I found almost no blood under him and I saw the tracks of a sledge. Seked assured me he’s sent no sledge into that tomb. I’m convinced Montu was slain somewhere else and his body hauled from that place to here. Everyone watching the progress of the retaining wall knew the tomb would soon be closed forever.
What better place to hide a murdered man?”
The guard who had been summoned to escort the dead man to the house of death came halfway out of the mouth of the tomb. A hush fell over the crowd. He spoke a few words to Pashed, waiting at the top, then turned around and said something to the men in the shaft behind him. Message relayed, he climbed to the surface. Two workmen Pashed had pressed into service stumbled out of the tomb. They carried between them the litter on which they had tied Montu’s body. At Bak’s suggestion, they had taken a length of linen with them to cover the dead man, but still the flies swarmed around. Both bearers looked a bit green, and Bak knew exactly how they felt.
Murmurs rose among the men looking on, prayers taking the place of speculation. Nodding at Bak and Amonked, the guard led the bearers toward the ring of onlookers and the ramp that would take them up to the terrace. Men scurried out of the way, breaking the circle apart. As the two workmen carried their grim burden past, the rest craned their heads, trying to see all there was to see, hoping to glean a bit more gossip.
Amonked took Bak’s upper arm as if he needed support and they walked together through the break in the circle. Not until they reached the top of the ramp and were standing among several partially finished statues of Maatkare Hatshepsut did the shorter, stouter man release the younger, more fit of the pair.
Amonked slumped down onto the twice-size, almost finished face of Maatkare Hatshepsut wrapped for eternity as the lord Osiris, which was lying on its back in the sand. “I thank the lord Amon, Lieutenant, that I had the good sense to enlist your help this morning. I can honestly report to my cousin and Senenmut that I have the matter well in hand.”
“I pray I can live up to your expectations, sir.”
“You will. I’m sure you will. I’ve every confidence in you.
You’ll not only lay hands on the slayer, but you’ll find the source of the many accidents that have plagued Djeser Djeseru and set to rest these tales of a malign spirit.”
The responsibility was a heavy one, and Bak offered a silent prayer to the lord Amon that his shoulders were strong enough to bear it. Noting the carved features beneath Amonked’s buttocks, he added another, equally fervent prayer that the Storekeeper of Amon would keep his vow to stand between him and Maatkare Hatshepsut.