his men approached, every eye turned their way. One boy stumbled, the youth behind him paused, the next in line bumped into him. Dirt rained from his basket.
Seked shouted a curse to focus their attention on their task, nodded a greeting to the newcomers, and moved a dozen or so paces away to stand at the base of a rubble ramp built along a segment of wall raised almost to its completed height. Shading his eyes with a hand, he looked up at two men at the top, who shoved a heavy block of stone off a sledge and into position. The front and upper surfaces of the stone, like those of its neighbors, had not yet been smoothed so facing stones could be laid in front of them. Other small crews were scattered along the top of the ramp, the nearest chipping away the rough surfaces, the next installing facing stones, the third dressing them. The ramp would be raised as each new course was completed.
Farther west, near the point where the wall joined the retaining wall that supported the mound on which the new shrine of the lady Hathor would be built, the rubble ramps had been removed and scaffolds built for the men who were doing the fine detail work. One crew added the finishing touches to plinths with recessed paneling, while others were carving and polishing deep reliefs of the royal falcon and cobra located at regular intervals high upon the wall.
Pashed’s greeting was unenthusiastic but resigned. The wrinkles in his brow looked deeper than before, his general air more long-suffering and harried.
He gestured toward the line of youths. “We need to go on with the retaining wall. I trust you have no objection to our filling the shaft?”
“None.”
Turning his back so no one but Bak would hear, Pashed murmured, “I feared if we allowed too much time to pass, the men would convince themselves that Montu’s shade might in anger come back to the tomb and do them harm.”
Bak spoke as softly as the architect. “I understand. Djeser Djeseru doesn’t need another malign spirit.” Raising his voice to a normal level, he introduced Hori and Kasaya.
“They’ll serve as my right hand and my left. I wish them to go where they want unimpeded, to ask what they will and be answered with the truth.”
Pashed eyed the pair critically. “I’ll not tolerate a disruption of the work.”
“They’ll not intrude. If they do, they’ll answer to me.”
Not entirely satisfied, or so he looked, Pashed beckoned to a stoop-shouldered, white-haired scribe squatting in a narrow slice of shade beside the wall. The elderly man, his eyes sharp and curious, dropped a limestone chip as big as his hand into a basket filled with bronze tools, laid his scribal pallet on top, and came forward. On any construction site, Bak knew, one of the first tasks of each day was that of the scribe, who had to distribute tools where needed and take back in return those in need of repair or sharpening, recording each transaction as he did so.
“You must take these men to the foremen and chief craftsmen, Amonemhab. Tell them. .” Pashed repeated Bak’s every word even though the scribe, like all who toiled nearby, had certainly heard.
With the good humor of a man accustomed to going about his business unseen by the mighty, the scribe led Hori and Kasaya away, taking his basket with him and the tools for which he would be held accountable. After a few paces he realized Bak was not with them. He paused and looked back, waiting.
Bak waved them away. “I must speak with you, Pashed.”
“Me? Why me?” The architect tried to appear surprised, but as the sole remaining man of authority who toiled daily at Djeser Djeseru, he had to have known he would be the first to be questioned.
Taking him by the upper arm, Bak ushered him to an open stretch of sand well out of hearing distance of the many curious individuals toiling near the wall. Pashed’s stride was quick and jerky, agitated.
Bak hid a smile. The architect was clearly upset, but he was also a man of purpose, and that purpose was to complete the construction of Djeser Djeseru. “You made it clear when you were speaking with Amonked yesterday that you didn’t like Montu, that you thought him a man who shirked his duty.”
“I didn’t slay him, if that’s what you think,” Pashed said, indignant.
“I’m not saying you did. But if I’m to lay hands on the man who took his life, I must speak with everyone who knew him, you included.” Bak could not remember how many times he had given the same assurance since walking at the head of the Medjay police at Buhen.
Pashed pursed his mouth; the wrinkles in his brow deepened. “I can tell you nothing of significance, I assure you.”
“You resented him-understandably so-for letting you carry his load as well as your own.”
“I did.”
“A man so thoughtless must’ve had other, equally intolerable traits.”
Pashed opened his mouth to speak, then closed it tight and shook his head.
“What thought did you swallow?” Bak asked.
The architect released a long, unhappy sigh. “Can you not go to the foremen? The chief craftsmen? They’ve as much knowledge of Montu as I. More.”
“Pashed. .” Bak frowned at the architect. “Though Senenmut holds the ultimate responsibility, you and you alone now carry the burden of building our sovereign’s memorial temple. Do you wish to see the project falter while my men time and time again question one workman after another? You can be sure that endless questioning will plant turmoil in their hearts, no matter how much care we take to calm them.”
The architect toyed with the hem of his kilt, shook grit from a sandal. When at last he spoke, the words came out with as much difficulty as a sound tooth being pulled from a healthy jaw. “He never failed to throw his weight around, ordering everyone to do what he thought beneath him. And let me assure you, he felt every task beneath him except issuing orders.” His chin shot into the air, his tone grew resentful.
“He treated all of us-including me-as men placed on this earth to do his bidding. As servants. In spite of the fact that without me to see that the project went on, with or without him, Senenmut might long ago have seen through him.”
Had Senenmut truly failed to see, Bak wondered, or had he simply ignored the dead man’s faults? “How long did Amonked take to notice his many absences?”
“Two weeks at most,” Pashed admitted with grim satisfaction. “Montu underestimated him and failed to alter his indolent ways. He never once noticed that Amonked came day after day, without a break, and that he never failed to see an error in any man’s ways.”
“Senenmut, on the other hand, is a busy man, one who seldom comes to Djeser Djeseru.”
Pashed glanced quickly at Bak, as if suspecting him of being facetious. “Montu’s most disagreeable trait, one we all despised, was that he never failed to take credit for other men’s ideas. The more creative the thought, the quicker he was to make it his own.”
“For example. .?”
Once begun, the architect would not be turned onto a lesser path. “He fawned over Senenmut, gaining his ear, telling tales, making himself look good and everyone else mediocre at best. To hear him talk, he alone created this magnificent building.”
Having heard many tales in the garrison of Senenmut’s penchant for self-aggrandizement, Bak had an idea the bragging fell on deaf ears. Or on the tolerant ears of one who knew he could squash Montu like an insect any time he chose to do so. “Was Montu a competent architect?” he asked, recalling Amonked’s statement that he and Pashed were equally skilled.
“He was,” Pashed admitted reluctantly, “when he shouldered his load.”
“Pashed! Sir!”
A workman came racing down the ramp from the terrace and sped across the sand to where they stood. Every boy outside the tomb, every man toiling on the wall, stopped to look and listen.
“Sir!” The workman halted before Pashed, gasping for breath. Sweat ran down his face and chest. “Another old tomb has been found. Perenefer wishes you to come.”
Pashed stared, distraught, at the messenger and then at Bak. “Not another murdered man. No, just an old tomb. I pray!”
“The donkey stepped in a hole.” The foreman, Perenefer, ran his hand up and down the brush-like mane of a gray donkey laden with large reddish water jars. He was short and stout, and looked so much like Seked, the foreman in charge of the south retaining wall, that they had to be brothers.
