Heribsen’s glowering countenance brooked no refusal to comply. They nodded in reluctant accord.
“When did you last see the chief architect Montu?”
To a man, the men relaxed, preferring to speak of the dead rather than the unknown.
A short man with paint-stained fingers stepped forward.
“He came two days ago, sir, shortly before we lost the sun.
He went from one wall to another, examining the painting we’d done and the carving of reliefs. We thought he’d never finish.”
“When he finally left, we waited a few moments and then followed him down the ramp,” the older man said. “The last we saw of him was down there. .” He pointed vaguely to ward the end of the southern retaining wall. “. . near the white statue of our sovereign.”
“Did he seem happy? Angry? Expectant? He was apparently in no hurry. Did he seem to be awaiting someone?”
Again the men looked at each other, trying to decide. Bak suspected they had all been so eager to go home, they had noticed nothing but the passage of time.
“He criticized, as always, but not with his usual scathing tongue, and he demanded no changes.” The bald man who spoke glanced at his fellows, seeking agreement. Several nods drove him on. “We joked later, saying he must be looking forward to a night of pleasure.”
Well satisfied, Bak thanked them with a smile and sent them on their way. He had narrowed the time of death considerably. Montu had been slain sometime in the evening or, more likely, early in the night, a time when the malign spirit was said to appear.
Following the men down the ramp, he said, “Tell me of the malign spirit, Heribsen.”
“I’ve never seen it, nor do I expect to.”
“You don’t believe it exists?”
“I don’t.”
“What of the many deaths and injuries at Djeser Djeseru?
Do you believe them accidents and nothing more?”
A long silence carried them to the base of the ramp. The chief artist stopped and offered a smile, but it was off center, lacking his usual good humor. “How can I speak of accidents when thus far my crew has remained untouched?”
“A scaffold fell, I’ve been told, and a man injured.”
“It fell within the sanctuary while we were painting an upper wall. A binding had come loose, a knot that didn’t hold. We inspect them more carefully these days.”
“Did the malign spirit make the scaffold unsafe? Or was it done at the hands of a man?”
Heribsen looked pained. “Would a man come up here in the dead of night to loosen a binding when all who toil here know a malign spirit inhabits this valley?”
“But you don’t believe in a malign spirit.”
“I don’t. Nor would I risk my life to come in the dark to do damage to a scaffold.”
Bak gave up. Heribsen did not believe, but he feared. The contradiction confounded him.
“They say the tomb contains a treasure.” Useramon, the chief sculptor responsible for the army of statues that would one day adorn Djeser Djeseru, stared toward Imen across the many blocks of stone lying on the terrace. The guard stood alone; the priest had not arrived. “Is that true?”
Bak had known the news would spread, but it irritated him nonetheless. “The sepulcher is small,” he said, avoiding an outright lie, “and contains a few wooden models and some pottery as well as the wrapped body.”
“From what I heard. .”
“I’m here to speak of Montu, Useramon.”
The large, heavily muscled sculptor nodded, unperturbed by the implied reproach. “Heribsen and I spent many an hour complaining about him, I can tell you.” He sprinkled a soft piece of leather with water and dabbed it in a bowl of silica powder, collecting a thin layer of the shiny abrasive.
“For all the good it did us.”
“You spoke to Senenmut?”
“To Pashed, who had problems of his own.”
Bak seated himself on the legs of the colossal red granite statue of Maatkare Hatshepsut he had found the sculptor polishing with loving care. The image lay on its back, Useramon on his knees beside it, toiling on its right shoulder.
When standing to his full height, Bak guessed the craftsman would be two hands taller than the diminutive chief artist.
They must be quite a sight when walking together, he thought.
“Heribsen told me of his complaints. What were yours?”
“We’re artists, too, and he treated us as such. He never ceased to criticize our work or failed to alter the patterns drawn on the stone. At first he was content with that, but during the past year or so, he waited until the sculpting began, the early stages too far along to reasonably change the image.” Useramon placed the gritty leather on the statue’s arm and began to rub the surface. “If he’d not been so friendly with Senenmut, so quick to tell tales, I’d have waylaid him in a dark and empty lane and. .” He looked up, laughed softly. “Well, he’d think the malign spirit gentle in compari-son.”
“You didn’t let him think you’d changed the design when you hadn’t, as Heribsen’s crew did?”
“We did, but the need to pretend was as vexatious as making the changes.” Useramon grinned. “Well, not quite. At least we had the satisfaction of producing a respectable piece of sculpture.”
The whisper of the abrasive, the methodical back and forth movement, could easily put a man to sleep, Bak thought. “Didn’t you enjoy making him look the fool?”
“I’d have enjoyed it more if he’d had the wit to see what we were doing. My one regret is that he was slain before this temple was finished. I planned to tell him on the day of its dedication how foolish we’d made him look.”
Bak glanced toward the tomb where Imen stood. The sun was sinking behind the western peak, casting a bright red af-terglow high into the sky. If Kaemwaset did not soon arrive, the tomb would remain open through the night. “Has your crew been involved in any of the many accidents that have occurred on this project?”
“We don’t invite trouble, Lieutenant. When a statue must be lowered to the ground or raised, when it must be moved, we summon ordinary workmen to do the task for us.”
“The malign spirit has struck no one toiling for you? Neither sculptor nor workman?”
“Malign spirit.” Useramon’s hand stopped moving, he looked up from his task and barked out a laugh. “A statue did roll off a sledge on which it was being moved, and a workman’s ankle was broken. That was sheer bad luck, nothing more. The rope with which it was secured was faulty. I saw for myself the weakened fibers.”
“Did Heribsen not tell you of the scaffold that collapsed beneath one of his men?”
“He told me. We both agreed that a malign spirit had nothing to do with either accident. As I said before, it was bad luck. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“He failed to discount altogether the idea of a malign spirit.”
Useramon returned to his task. “All the world knows such spirits exist. The question is: why would one inhabit this valley? A shrine to the lady Hathor has existed here since the beginning of time. The ancient temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep has been a place of deep respect for many generations. The temple of our sovereign’s illustrious ancestor Djeserkare Amonhotep and his beloved mother Ahmose Nefertari, the remains of which can still be seen at the end of this terrace, has been a place to bend a knee for many years.”
“A new shrine has been started for the lady Hathor, making the old one useless,” Bak countered. “Stones are being taken from the ancient temple to be used in the new. And the old temple of Djeserkare Amonhotep and his mother will vanish beneath this terrace. Maybe a man and not a spirit is annoyed that Djeser Djeseru is supplanting so much of the past.”
The whisper of grit on stone stopped. Useramon looked up. “I’ve several times asked my village scribe to write a message on the side of a bowl, pleading that such was the case. I’ve filled the bowl with food offerings and left them at the temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep, where the spirit most often has been seen.”
Unable to think of an appropriate response, Bak rose to his feet, bade good-bye to the sculptor, and headed toward the newly opened tomb and the guard Imen. He marveled again at how quick the men were to deny the
