They were rough and rocky, at first as uncommunicative as the path, but soon he found a tiny pocket of sand deposited by the recent storm, and on it the perfect image of a bare foot, as yet untouched by wind. The print was that of an adult, too large to be a woman, unscarred, ordinary. Maybe that of a sailor, maybe not. Offering a quick prayer to the lord Amon that
44 / Lauren Haney patience would reward him with a more revealing clue, he walked on, taking a step or two at a time, stopping, searching for further sandy patches.
The trail again turned back on itself, climbed higher. He spotted another, larger pocket of sand sheltered by an out-cropping rock four or five paces above the path. He thought he glimpsed some form of imprint. Practically holding his breath, he bounded up the slope. His foot slipped on an unstable bit of rock and he fell, skinning a knee. Indifferent to the blood oozing from the wound, to his burning flesh, he knelt to examine the impression left in the sand.
The image was distinct, easily read. His spirits soared. To the left was a smooth square amid a network of triangles, the imprint of the net-like garment worn by oarsmen, with a leather patch at the rear to protect the kilt. The tiny hand-prints of a monkey, a few smudged as if the creature had grown restless, marked the sand to the right. A monkey? Bak wondered. He could in no way imagine so exotic a creature living in a poor village along this portion of the river. And neither Roy’s ship nor Ramose’s had carried wild animals as part of the cargo. Perhaps the monkey was a pet. A sailor might somehow have laid hands on the animal and kept it as his own. Not a member of Ramose’s crew, for no monkey had been found when his ship was inspected in Buhen.
No, the man who sat here had been among the crew of the wrecked ship. He and the others who had survived the storm had made their way south to the village, where they had recruited men to help salvage the cargo. But what of Captain Roy? Why would a man strip his own vessel of all it carried?
A movement drew his eye toward the wadi mouth. Imsiba stood at the rail of Ramose’s ship, waving both arms over his head, his signal that the captain and his crew were free of guilt. Bak plunged down the trail and hurried to the man he had wronged. An apology was in order.
“Until you came, we knew nothing about a shipwreck.”
Pahuro, the headman of the village upriver from the wreck, shook his shaggy white head in absolute denial. “Since we didn’t know about it, we can’t have taken the cargo.”
The logic was impeccable, Bak thought, and a blatant lie.
Leaning back against the hip-high mudbrick wall that surrounded a paddock containing two plump white cows and a gray donkey, he looked up at the trail where it vanished from sight at the top of the escarpment. No sign of Imsiba, who had gone in search of a youth he had spotted on the clifftop, keeping an eye on the wreck. A villager, maybe, or one of the truant sailors.
Inside the paddock, flies buzzed around several greenish piles of manure whose smell blended with the odor of the animals and the tangy scent of hay. A tame crow hopped along the wall, its hoarse cry a demand for food or attention.
From where Bak sat, the village looked much as it had from the river: a few poor houses reached by narrow, dusty lanes giving access to doorways leading into dark, airless rooms.
Three small, naked children, one with his thumb in his mouth, peered down from a rooftop.
Now and again, Bak glimpsed Ramose’s sailors going from house to house, Tjanuny at their head, looking for missing items. He had made the oarsman their leader as soon as he had returned the skiff with appropriate apologies and sufficient groveling. The villagers stayed out of their way, watching their progress from a distance, whispering. They seemed furtive rather than resentful; people with a secret, not the indignant victims of an unjust search.
“Your village is neat and clean, Pahuro, your fields well tended.” Bak nodded toward the oasis spread out below.
“Your date palms must be the envy of every man and woman along this stretch of river. Can you honestly say you didn’t have the good sense, the moment the storm died down, to send children out in search of any useful and desirable items that might’ve blown ashore?”
Pahuro, looking smug at the compliment and torn by the conclusion, readjusted his position on the one chair the village possessed. It was a stiff wooden armchair, its seat covered by a pillow with a complicated pattern of interlocking 46 / Lauren Haney multicolored spirals worked onto its upper surface. Before the old man had settled himself upon it, Bak had noticed how thin the pillow was, perhaps to display the design to its best advantage. Whatever the reason for so skimpy a stuffing, it was too thin to protect the bony rear of the tall, skinny headman. Bak suspected patience would reward him with the truth simply because Pahuro would sooner or later become desperate to stand up. However, he had no desire to wait so long.
“The storm ended late in the day.” Pahuro shifted from his left buttock to his right, from one tale to another. “I don’t like to see the children far from home after nightfall.”
Bak bent to pick up a straw, stuck one end into his mouth, and formed a sympathetic smile around it. “I’d have shared your concern, especially with a dozen or more sailors making their way upriver in search of food and shelter.”
“The crew survived?” Pahuro smiled. “I thank the lord Hapi for sparing them.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t see them! My Medjay sergeant tracked them from the wrecked vessel to this village.” A lie, but the local people believed Medjays more knowledgeable about the desert than any ordinary man of Wawat. It never occurred to them that Bak’s men had all been reared in the land of Kemet, and most had spent their youth tending the fields of the lord Amon.
Pahuro wriggled in his chair, not from discomfort this time, Bak guessed, but because he suspected he was being driven into a corner from which he might not escape.
The sailors came out of the last house to be searched and Tjanuny shook his head. They had found nothing. Nor did Bak see Imsiba on the path, bringing in the youthful watch-man. With the sun racing toward the western horizon, his hope of soon laying hands on crew and cargo was fading with the light.
“I know you salvaged all you could. Why shouldn’t you?
Life in this wretched land is hard.” Bak stared at nothing as if trying to reach a decision, then flung the straw aside and stood up. “This is what I’ll do, Pahuro. If you guide me to the missing cargo, I’ll close my eyes to your offense.”
The old man frowned, skeptical.
“I’ll blame no one in this village,” Bak promised, “neither man nor woman nor child. I’ll turn my back and walk away, and not another word will ever be uttered.”
Pahuro shook his head, sighed. “You lay blame where no blame is due, Lieutenant.” A secret thought touched his face, a look of cunning, and he pushed himself out of the chair.
“Come, let me show you.” Without a backward glance, he walked in among the houses of the village. Bak, hurrying to catch up, beckoned Tjanuny to come along.
Pahuro led them from one house to another, into sheds and through lean-tos, inviting them to prod and poke, to look again at what the search party had already examined.
Certain the old man was trying to cloud his vision, Bak kept his eyes wide open, his thoughts alert to all possibilities. As before, the villagers watched from a distance, whispering, but now they looked to be in good spirits, with a fresh confidence, and he even saw one man nudge another in the ribs.
The plundered cargo was here, he was sure, but where? Had he walked within arm’s length yet failed to see it?
At last a narrow lane took them to a stone and mudbrick structure at the back of the natural terrace. The way the stones were laid and the various sizes of the bricks told Bak the house had been built many generations earlier and repaired or altered at different times in the past. The front portion looked to be recently renovated, but the rear of the building was close to collapse. One wall had fallen, another leaned at a precarious angle. More than half the roof had caved in.
Six large gray pots converted for use as beehives drew Bak’s eye to a section of undamaged roof. What were they doing there? he wondered. Hives were normally placed closer to the oasis, not on the opposite side of a village, forcing the insects to fly over rooftops where the women worked in the cooler hours and the children played. In the lane below the hives, he noticed, bees were flying around a small, broken jar laying in a pool of liquid gold, honey. Rec-48 / Lauren Haney ognizing a master touch, he laughed softly. “Did you search this house, Tjanuny?”
