“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 tied 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.”
As she hurried out the door, he picked up a date and popped it into his mouth. He wondered who had been using who: Montu, who had gained comfort and wealth through the alliance, or Mutnefret, who had won a man of some status and the pleasures of the bedchamber.
Bak followed a spindly white-haired servant up an enclosed zigzagging stairway. Large wine vats lined the walls of each landing, giving off a heavy musty scent that failed to overpower the yeasty smell of baking bread that wafted through the house. At the top floor, they crossed a small sunny courtyard where three female servants were sitting in the shade of a palm frond lean-to, weaving coarse white household linen on upright looms. Beyond lay Montu’s private domain.
The architect’s office was spacious and bright, with three sturdy white-plastered mudbrick columns supporting the ceiling and, Bak guessed, heavy granaries on the roof above.
Four high windows made secure by wooden grills allowed the smallest of breezes to cool the interior. Not sure where he should start, he walked around the room, looking without touching. Along one wall, a wooden frame supported several dozen pottery storage jars, most plugged and sealed but a few open to reveal scrolls. Fortunately, Montu or, more likely, the scribe who assisted him in handling his affairs was an orderly individual, who had noted the contents on each jar’s shoulder. About half of them related to the business of the household, the remainder to Montu’s task as an architect.
“Where’s your master’s scribe?” Bak asked the old man.
“I could use his help in going through these scrolls.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but our mistress sent him to her country estate. Someone in authority had to be there, and since she has many decisions to make here in Waset, she sent Teti in her place.”
Bak nodded, well aware of the many options she would have to choose among when arranging for her husband’s embalming and burial. “Does Teti spend much of his time over there?” he asked, recalling that the scribe had been across the river the final day of Montu’s life.
“Two days out of three, sir.” The old man hesitated, added,
“Our master enjoyed the bounties of the estate, but had no talent for farming. Teti managed both land and accounts.”
“He appears to be a man of uncommon worth.”
“Indeed he is, sir.”
Turning away from the files, Bak studied the rest of the room. A thick pallet lay on the floor at the brightest end, marking Montu’s place, while a woven reed mat accommo-dated the scribe. Between the two lay scribal palettes, a water dish, and cakes of red and black ink; a bowl of aromatic leaves and dried flower petals; and a half-empty wine jar and a stemmed bowl with a reddish crust on the bottom. He eyed the bowl with satisfaction. If it told a true tale, no servant had cleaned the room since the architect’s death.
Close to Montu’s pallet were a basket of tied scrolls and several piles of papyrus scraps held in place beneath smooth, flattish stones. Near the scribe’s place were baskets of pottery shards and limestone flakes and three small plaster-coated boards, all used for rough calculations and writings.
Well out of the way against a far wall were surveyors’ and builders’ tools and rock samples. A cast-off tunic lay on a low table, and a pair of fine leather sandals had been kicked off near the doorway.
Bak dismissed the servant, dragged one of three stools close to the files and, with a resigned sigh, set to work. A cursory inspection of the household accounts verified his as-sumption that Montu had wed a wealthy woman. Mutnefret and Sitre had inherited in equal amounts the house in Waset and the substantial country estate on the west bank of the river. Bak was not a scribe, but he could see that the properties had increased in value slowly but steadily over the years.
Whether the scribe Teti had been guided by Montu-and Bak doubted he had if the architect had shirked his duty at home as at Djeser Djeseru-the women’s property had not suffered.
Moving on to Montu’s professional life, Bak found scrolls that revealed a man of modest talent who, as he moved up from the smaller projects to the large, had always toiled among others of equal rank, and had always stood behind another, more dynamic man. One such as Senenmut, who relied on lesser men to make his projects a success.
Beneath the stone weights, Bak found orderly piles of documents, half-completed drawings, and sketches of architectural elements. The rock samples, limestone one and all, he guessed had been taken from various locations around Djeser Djeseru. The pottery shards and limestone flakes would have been gleaned from a trash dump, their smooth, unblemished sides to be used for rough drawings, notes, and quick calculations of too small importance to be placed on the more valuable papyrus.
Glimpsing sketches and scraps of writing on some of the shards, he drew the loose-woven and rather worn basket close to take a better look. If Montu had already used them, he might have carelessly thrown away some hint of what he had been doing that had led to his death.
Lifting out one shard after another, he quickly realized the sketches were not the work of Montu, nor, he assumed, were the bits of writing. He found many fully realized drawings, most having no color, each created by an artist of exceptional talent. He recognized them as trial copies of the reliefs that adorned the walls of Djeser Djeseru, thrown away after the drawing was transferred to the temple wall. The back sides of the shards were bare, which explained why Montu-or, more likely, someone in his stead-had collected them for future use.
Rougher sketches embellished the remainder of the shards. Almost cartoon-like, they revealed a highly developed, sometimes vulgar sense of humor. Many were general in nature, funny but irreverent commentaries on daily life in the capital, on the surrounding farmland, at Djeser Djeseru and the Great Place. A small percentage represented Senenmut or Maatkare Hatshepsut, a few in an extremely unflat-tering way. These sketches, like the more accomplished drawings, had come from a trash pile at Djeser Djeseru, he felt certain.
Smiling at an especially humorous erotic sketch of an aging lover with a courtesan, he reached deeper into the basket. The shard he retrieved was the shoulder and neck of a broken jar. Curious, he turned it right side up. His breath caught in his throat. The sketch on its outer surface was incomplete, but enough remained to recognize the wing tips and rear segment of a bee and what might well be two beads in a necklace. It had not been drawn by as accomplished a hand as most of the other sketches in the basket. In fact, it looked very much like the drawing on the jar he had confiscated in Buhen.
Whether Montu had picked up the shard by chance or had deliberately hidden it among the others, Bak had no way of knowing. Could the architect have made the drawing himself? Could he have been the man stealing from the old tombs? Only a mission as serious as that, one that required secret activity, would account for his presence at Djeser Djeseru in the dead of night.
With rising excitement, he searched through the remaining shards. He found nothing more, which forced him to admit the shard could have been thrown away by anyone. Still, Montu could have gone into the valley to rob a tomb and by chance have bumped into the malign spirit. That man, fearing the terrible death he would face for causing the many deadly accidents, would most certainly have slain one who could, and no doubt would, air his identity.
Bak had not once considered Montu a tomb robber, but with the shard in his hand, the possibility filled his heart.
Tamping down his excitement, telling himself he had no real proof, he returned to the main floor and told a comely young female servant he wished to speak again with Mutnefret.
“I’m sorry, sir, but she’s gone to a sculptor’s studio to pur-chase a votive statue upon which our master’s name will be carved. She plans to have the image placed in the mansion of the lord Amon so it can share in the bounty of offerings presented each day to the greatest of gods.”
Is she easing her conscience because she doesn’t care that he’s dead, Bak wondered, or does she really believe him worthy of offerings? A man who cheated his co-workers out of his fair share of effort, one who may have robbed the dead. “Is mistress Sitre available?”
“You wish to speak with me, Lieutenant?” Sitre asked, stepping through the doorway. She waved her hand to dismiss the servant, dropped onto the stool Bak had occupied earlier, and offered him the other seat. Her eyes were clear, beautifully made up. Her sobs had evidently been of short duration. “Did you find anything of interest in that wretched Montu’s place of work?”
“The basket of pottery shards,” he said, opting to stand.
“Do you know when he brought them home?”
The young woman was too preoccupied with adjusting her broad beaded collar to notice the shard in his hand. “A week or two ago, I suppose.”
“Was he in the habit of collecting them personally or did he ask others to do it for him?”
“Are you jesting, Lieutenant?” Her eyes darted toward him and she laughed, a harsh, jarring sound from one so lovely. “He’d never have stooped so low as to go through a trash dump. Especially not at Djeser Djeseru, where dozens of men lesser than he would’ve see him.”
Her dislike of her mother’s husband colored everything she said, irritating Bak, making him wonder how much could be at best an exaggeration, at worst untrue. “Do you have any idea who might’ve gathered them for him?”
“The chief scribe Ramose has an apprentice, his son, I believe.” She plucked a lily from the bowl and held it to her nose. The scent was strong, too sweet for Bak’s pleasure.
“Montu liked to take advantage of the boy. Of Ramose, really, since he could not refuse.”
Vowing to speak with the youth as soon as he returned to Djeser Djeseru, Bak rested his shoulder against a column.
“Are bees kept at your country estate?” Ordinarily he would not have asked such a question of a young woman of means, but if Pashed had been correct in saying she and her mother toiled beside their servants, she would know.
“Of course. Doesn’t every farmer keep them?”
He could see she was puzzled by the new subject. “Do you use all the honey you harvest, or do you have excess to trade?”
“I think we use it all, but you’d have to ask our scribe Teti to be sure. Why do you wish to know?”
He held out the shard so she could see the sketch. “I found this among Montu’s possessions. Do you identify your honey containers in this manner?”
“We don’t, no, but I think I’ve seen the symbol somewhere.”
“Can you recall where?”
“At the market here in Waset? At someone’s estate?” She waved the flower slowly back and forth beneath her nose, trying to recall. “Must’ve been a long time ago. The answer eludes me.”
“A neighbor, perhaps? Or someone with whom Montu was friendly?”
“I’ve no idea.”
Disappointed, he dropped onto the second stool. “Did Montu name the man who told him he also saw the malign spirit?”
“Are you serious?” Her laugh was scathing. “He thought himself the most important man in Kemet, Lieutenant. No others equaled him and none were worthy of mention except in passing.”
“He gave no hint, such as the man’s occupation?”
“He referred to him merely as ‘another man.’ ”
“With Montu no longer among the living, will you wed the young soldier you wished to wed before he interfered?”
He was fishing and he knew it, throwing out a line in the hope of catching almost anything.
“My mother told you of him?” Sitre’s voice rang with indignation. “After letting that wretched husband of hers be-troth me to another, how dare she speak of him!”
“She was making excuses for you. Offering a reason for your dislike of Montu.”
“Montu was vile, plain and simple.” She let out a scornful snort. “He couldn’t keep his eyes off me, yet he dared not touch me. He dared not risk angering my mother, losing her wealth and property. And he dared not soil me, for he’d promised me to a wealthy nobleman, thinking to raise his own position in life. Thinking to walk side by side with one familiar with the corridors of the royal house. Thinking he’d be considered an equal by men of royal blood.”
“Montu sounds to me like a swine,” Bak said, welcoming the opening she had unknowingly offered. “Dishonest through and through.”
Sitre looked thoughtful. “I don’t think he was out-and-out dishonest, Lieutenant. He had what I’ve always thought of as a convenient honesty. An honesty prompted by whatever he needed or desired at the time.”
Her answer seemed sincere, not inspired by her dislike of the man. Which led Bak to wonder exactly what Montu had hoped to attain that had driven him to rifle the ancient tombs, putting at risk a life of relative ease and luxury, a life most men would envy.