Twins. The sole difference as far as Bak could see was that this man had no scar on his forehead. “As he struggled to free himself, the sand fell away. For a time, we feared he, too, would drop out of sight.”
“How’d you save him?” Bak asked the small boy who held the rope halter.
“I yelled, sir, and Perenefer came, and so did they.”
The boy pointed at five men standing nearby, ready to help should help be needed. Or, more likely, unwilling to leave, fearing they would miss something. They were covered with the fine white dust risen from nearby limestone drums, which they had been shaping into sixteen-sided column segments.
“They caught his front hooves and pulled him free.” The boy stared wide-eyed at the black hole, as big as two men’s hands placed one beside the other, down which sand was still trickling. “I thank the lord Amon they were close by.
Only the greatest of gods knows how deep the tomb is.”
“Shall we open it, sir?” Perenefer asked.
Pashed glanced at the lord Khepre, the morning sun climbing the vault of heaven toward midday. “We’ve most of the day ahead of us. Do so.” He turned to Bak. “We’ve been warned of robbers in the local burial places. We dare not leave these old tombs open for long.”
“Have you unearthed many?”
“A dozen or so since first we began to level the land. More than I expected. The surrounding hillsides are riddled with tombs. I thought most of the ancient nobility to be buried there, not here.”
Perenefer glared at the stonemasons, who had begun to edge away. “Why’re you standing there gaping? Come on.
You surely can brush away a little sand.”
The men came forward with scant enthusiasm, but once they set about the task, they toiled with a will. Beneath the windblown sand they found three rectangular stone slabs lying side by side. The corner of one had broken away. A fault had allowed the stone to collapse beneath the donkey’s weight.
At another command from Perenefer, the men took up levers and began to shift the broken stone sideways. The boy led his donkey to a safer spot a few paces away. So he could see better, Bak climbed onto the back of a large red granite statue of a reclining lion with the face of Maatkare Hatshepsut. Only luck and the will of the gods had placed the statue, heavier by far than the donkey, so close yet so far from the weakened stone and the hole into which it might well have toppled. If it had fallen into the tomb, it would have appeared to the workmen as the most dire of omens.
“Unless appearances deceive, the tomb has never been opened,” Pashed said with obvious relief. “We shouldn’t find a new death here.”
With Perenefer urging the masons on, the slabs were quickly shifted and the mouth of the shaft gaped open, a hole as wide as a man’s arm was long and too deep to see to the end.
“Bring a pole and place it across the shaft,” the architect ordered, “and bring a rope and torch. I must go down, and someone must go with me.” He bestowed upon Bak the same pointed look Bak had given him before they entered the tomb in which Montu had been found. “I want no man to accuse me of robbing the dead.”
Bak clung with one hand to the rope and, with the other, held the torch low, trying to glimpse the bottom of the shaft before he reached it. The light danced against the rough-cut walls, forming shifting patterns of dark and glitter. The air, sealed inside for many years, was still and close and hot. He spotted the bottom and glimpsed the black mouth of either a chamber or a transverse tunnel. His feet touched stone and he released the rope. Calling to the men above to raise the line for Pashed, he turned to peer down what proved to be a horizontal shaft. More than a dozen paces long and lined with crumpled baskets, it opened into a room; the burial chamber, he assumed. How large it was he could not tell.
The light from his torch did not reach inside.
He longed to go on, to see all this tomb contained and return to the surface. He did not like enclosed dark spaces. But his task was to lay hands on a slayer and learn the cause of so many accidents, while Pashed was the man responsible for Djeser Djeseru. He had to respect the architect’s authority.
The men above shouted a warning and the rope creaked as Pashed swung out over the open shaft. Bak held the torch high, letting him see where he was going. The short, slight man proved surprisingly agile, dropping from the rope before his feet touched the floor. Hands on hips, he looked upward, gauging the depth of the shaft down which they had come. Turning, peering into the horizontal tunnel, he held out his hand for the torch. This was not the first old tomb he had entered, and with no expectation of finding a fresh body, he showed no fear.
Careful not to bump baskets whose age had made them fragile, Bak followed the architect to the burial chamber. It was small, three or four paces to a side, and the ceiling low.
What had once been a magnificent rectangular wooden coffin filled more than half the space. Water had come in, probably more than once, and a vague smell of decay lingered, blending with the faint scent of flowers or aromatic oils. Pottery jars lay scattered about, a few broken but most whole and sealed. Jumbled together in a corner were three small wooden boats and their tiny wooden crews. Beside them sat several wooden boxes containing tiny wooden men and women and animals, tools, jars, furniture. Miniature necessities of a nobleman’s life thrown into disorder.
The coffin had broken apart and much of it rotted away, revealing an inner coffin in an equally poor state. The wrappings on the body were stained and decayed, exposing a portion of the painted plaster mask, one foot whose flesh was gone, leaving behind a broken pile of bones, and a wrinkled and blackened arm wearing two bracelets. Tiny inlaid butterflies adorned one; the second was a wide gold band with three miniature golden cats lying in a row along the top.
Both were exquisite.
As expected, no fresh body shared the chamber with the ancient body.
Bak bent to look closer at the bracelets. The five pieces he had found in Buhen were similar in workmanship to these.
They had been taken from a tomb much like this one, he felt sure. A richer tomb, most likely, but the noble man or woman who had been laid to rest here had gone to the netherworld at about the same time. If he walked in Lieutenant Menna’s sandals. . He did not. He could only suggest that Menna look closer at the ancient burial places in the vicinity of Djeser Djeseru. And he could keep his own eyes open, wide open.
“I must notify Lieutenant Menna of this tomb,” Pashed said, “and I must summon Kaemwaset. They can come together.”
“I’ve met the guard officer, but who is Kaemwaset?”
“A priest in the mansion of the lord Amon in Waset. The first prophet has given him the responsibility for all the rou-tine rituals performed while Djeser Djeseru is being built.
Each time a man is injured, he comes with the physician to offer the necessary incantations that will aid in healing.
Each time we find an old tomb, he utters the necessary prayers before we seal the burial chamber and cover it over.
If the lord Amon smiles upon us, he’ll come long before nightfall.”
Bak thought of the lord Khepre, making his slow progress toward midday. He had seen for himself how quickly Pashed could and would close a tomb, but if a man wished to rob the dead, leaving this one open for even an hour would tempt fate.
“You must assign a guard to stand watch until this sepulcher is closed. The bracelets we see are of great beauty and value. Can you imagine what treasure lies hidden beneath the bandages?”
Bak found the chief scribe Ramose sitting cross-legged on a tightly woven reed mat beneath a lean-to built against the mudbrick wall of a workmen’s hut. His task was to keep track of equipment and supplies, of labor performed and food and objects given in return. Two other scribes shared the burden and the square of shade cast by the palm frond roof. The older one was the large, stooped man who had taken Hori and Kasaya off to meet the chief craftsmen and foremen. The other was a child of twelve or so years, an apprentice who, if appearances did not deceive, was Ramose’s son. Bak had seen the three of them together, standing among the onlookers when Montu’s body had been carried away.
Ramose rose to his feet to greet him. “Welcome to my place of business, Lieutenant. I’ve been expecting you.”
“Because you’re now next in line in importance to Pashed?” Bak smiled to lighten the weight of his words. “Or
