The smell of incense was quickly swept away by the sharp, warm breeze. The leaves Kasaya had thrown aside after his morning meal played tag with the dust sporadically racing across the terrace. Not far away, a crew of workmen manhandled a column segment onto a sledge, the amount of effort required measured by how loud their overseer bellowed. Snatches of a workmen’s song were carried by the wind, the source impossible to locate.
Kaemwaset’s apprentice returned with the men Pashed had sent to see the tomb properly closed: Perenefer, his crew of workmen, and two brickmasons. Three boys wearing yokes across their shoulders carried suspended on flat, square wooden trays the dry mudbricks that would be used to build the wall to seal off the tomb before the shaft was filled. The men huddled against various statues and column parts, keeping out of the wind as best they could while they waited for Kaemwaset to finish the necessary prayers. The long line of youths who had been carrying debris from north to south across the terrace swung eastward to bring the fill to the open shaft.
A call from below sent Imen scrambling to his feet. He brought up the basket containing the priestly implements, and Kaemwaset followed. After shaking out a tangle in the rope, the guard beckoned the first of the two masons who would wall in the tomb and helped him descend into the shaft. The second mason attached the first tray to the rope and began to send the mudbricks down to his partner.
“How did you find the tomb?” Bak asked, drawing the priest away from the many prying eyes and ears.
“Just as it should be. You and Lieutenant Menna are to be applauded for keeping it safe through so many hours.”
Bak responded with a wry smile. “Maybe the local tomb robbers fear a malign spirit.”
“Malign spirit, Lieutenant?” The priest snorted. “Our sovereign was conceived by the lord Amon himself. Would any vile specter dare approach the memorial temple of one so beloved of the greatest of the gods?”
“The men who toil here are convinced a malign spirit is responsible for the many accidents, and my Medjay saw it last night, walking through her temple and that of Nebhepetre Montuhotep.”
“Bah! Such spirits are meant to frighten the poor and uneducated-as they’ve done here at Djeser Djeseru-but not the man of learning you so obviously are.”
Bak relented, smiled. “I seek a man of flesh and blood, Kaemwaset. Probably more than one.”
“I thank the lord Amon!” the priest said, openly relieved.
“I’ve been summoned to purify the temple each time a man has died or suffered injury. In each case, I’ve been told of an accident that might’ve been brought about by a careless man or by worn or faulty equipment or, in a few cases, by the whims of the gods. I’ve found no evidence to the contrary, but I believe none of those reasons. Nor is a malign spirit an acceptable explanation.”
Bak eyed the old man thoughtfully. “What are you trying to tell me, sir?”
Kaemwaset glanced at the workmen and drew Bak a few steps farther away, as if a single overheard word would be of major import.
“Our sovereign is a woman,” he said, speaking softly and intently, “a beautiful and talented woman who rules the land of Kemet with a firm yet beneficent hand. She has many enemies, foremost among them those who believe only a man can rule our land. Those individuals, I believe, are responsible for the many accidents, the rumors of a malign spirit.”
“What do they hope to gain? She isn’t one who gives up easily. She’d never send the workmen home and let the temple languish, incomplete as it is today.”
“Of course not. It will be built-no matter what the obstacles.”
“I’ve heard of no similar problems at other locations where she’s set men to toil: the mansion of the lord Amon, the shrine of the lady Pakhet, the quarries at Abu or Khenu or Wawat. .”
“Djeser Djeseru will have special significance. By causing trouble here, they think to discredit her, to make her look weak in the eyes of the people, to make her look less than what she is: daughter of the lord Amon himself.”
Kaemwaset paused-for effect, Bak suspected. “You see, young man, upon the walls of this temple will be depicted the tale of her divine conception.”
Later, after Menna and the masons returned to the surface, while Kaemwaset was mumbling additional prayers and performing further libations, Bak thought over the theory the old priest had offered. It sounded good, believable, but he suspected it owed more to necessity than reality. A tale created by Maatkare Hatshepsut’s followers within the mansion of the lord Amon. A tale designed to take advantage of a series of events for which they had no explanation.
Pashed arrived to make sure the tomb shaft was properly closed. Their duty completed, Kaemwaset and his apprentice returned to Waset. Lieutenant Menna strode away, saying he must inspect the guards who stood watch night and day at other burial places near the valley. He left Imen on duty with instructions to remain until the shaft was filled.
Bak waited at the top with Pashed, watching baskets of debris being lowered to Perenefer and the workmen whose duty it was to fill the horizontal shaft.
Kasaya finally returned with Seked, Perenefer’s brother.
Leaving the Medjay behind with the architect to see the sepulcher fully closed, Bak and the foreman set off across the terrace.
“Kames told me of the cliff that fell above the northern retaining wall and of the havoc it wreaked,” Bak explained. “I wish to see for myself the landscape above the wall.”
Seked gave him a probing look. “You think the fall not a natural one, sir?”
“I don’t know-and we may never learn the cause. The accident happened some months ago and the site may’ve changed.”
“It’s not rained since,” Seked said thoughtfully, “but rocks fall all the time. You can see for yourself how they’ve formed the slope at the base of the cliff. The bigger the fall, as that one was, the more rocks come down over a longer period of time.”
“You’ve no hope we’ll find signs of man or beast? Or malign spirit?”
The foreman smiled. “Your Medjay told me that’s what you seek.”
“You look skeptical.”
Bak stopped ten or so paces from the partially completed retaining wall to study the incline up which they meant to climb. Their presence silenced the men toiling on the wall, who peered around, curious as to their purpose. Other men, cutting away the slope at the end of the wall, forming a fairly smooth surface against which the builders would lay courses of stone, eyed them with no less interest. As Seked had said, the slope was covered with rocks, some broken into chunks and others pulverized by their fall, and looked treacherous to climb but by no means impossible. The gusting wind sent dust racing across the slope in spurts, pelting the men below.
“Let me put it this way, sir. If I see a light in the dead of night and it comes my way, I step aside lest a man bump into me, and at the same time I mutter an incantation to protect myself from I know not what.”
Bak burst into laughter. He had heard few men speak with so gifted a tongue, and certainly none at Djeser Djeseru. The men building the wall and those cutting away the slope smiled tentatively at each other, trying to share a jest they had not heard.
Sobering, Bak strode to the end of the cut and began to climb the untouched slope. A puff of wind drove dirt around him, forcing him to turn his back momentarily. “How long had you known Montu?”
“I’d toiled at his feet since I was a callow youth.” Seked, keeping up step for step, expelled a cynical laugh. “I may as well open my heart to you, sir, for I’m a poor liar and will in the end give myself away. I couldn’t stand the sight of him in the beginning, and I shed no tears the day his body was found.”
“Strong words, Seked.”
“He was a man of no principals, fonder of himself than of the lord Amon or of any other god. When younger and less self-satisfied than in his later years, he would without qualm work a man to death if he thought to gain a smile from one loftier than he.”
“Did your brother feel as you do?”
“If the truth be told, not a man at Djeser Djeseru felt otherwise. If he’d not been slain openly, as he was, he’d soon have met with a fatal accident.”
“Which would’ve been blamed upon the malign spirit.”
Seked’s smile was grim. “Cannot a spirit enter a man’s heart, sir? Cannot the malignancy fester and grow?”
Bak climbed on in silence, taking care where he placed his feet. The earth and stones that had most recently
