Dusk had settled on Djeser Djeseru when Bak and Kasaya came down the final slope. Hori raced across the terrace to meet them at the retaining wall. Pashed and the chief scribe Ramose hurried after him. The many men waiting among the statues and column parts came to life, rising from their makeshift seats to mingle, to chat, to speculate. Bak heard a jumble of words, felt the relief of men who had feared his action might bring upon them the wrath of the malign spirit.
A tentative relief, he sensed, not everlasting freedom from fear.
He gave the youthful scribe a broad smile and greeted Pashed and Ramose as if nothing of note had occurred since last he had seen them. With luck and the help of the gods, the men would take heart from that smile and casual greeting.
“What did you find up there, sir?” Hori asked.
Bak raised a finger to his lips, warning the men around him to speak softly. He had thought long and hard of how best to slay the rumor of a malign spirit, but to let the workmen overhear would sap the strength of what he planned.
“No malign spirit,” Kasaya whispered, as scornful as if he had never believed in so ridiculous a thing. “The signs of a man, as Lieutenant Bak expected.”
Pashed, his face gray from fatigue, looked like the weight of a monolithic column had been added to the burden on his shoulders. Ramose muttered a litany of curses.
“Who, sir?” Hori asked.
“I don’t know, but one day I will.” Bak’s voice and his expression were hard, determined. He turned to Pashed. “Send the men to their dwelling places. They must eat and sleep, for tomorrow is another day of toil.”
The chief architect’s mouth tightened. “They talk of re-bellion. Of laying down their tools and never again treading the sands of this valley.”
“So they truly mean to act.” Bak snorted his disgust.
“You must tell them without delay what you know,”
Ramose insisted.
“If I speak here and now, they’ll convince themselves that I’m saying what I’ve been told to say, or the malign spirit has blinded me to the truth, or it’s inhabited the body of a man. We didn’t climb all the way up that cliff to add strength to the tales they’re already telling.”
“We’d hoped you’d set their thoughts to rest.”
Bak could see how tired Ramose and Pashed were, how discouraged. He regretted he had nothing more positive to offer, only a plan that might or might not bear fruit. “You must tell the men that no more work will be done on the northern retaining wall until you know for a fact that it’s safe to toil there, then dismiss them. After they’ve gone, I’ll tell you what I plan and what you must do to help. We must convince them to remain at Djeser Djeseru.”
While the chief architect, with Ramose at his side, spoke to the men, Bak sat down on a large irregular chunk of rock that had fallen from the cliff. It had been left where it lay in the expectation that it would be useful as a column drum or for some other architectural purpose. He was tired to the bone. The rescue effort and the climb had exhausted him. At least dusk had brought some relief from the heat. “Has the tomb been closed?” he asked Hori.
“Yes, sir. As soon as Perenefer knew that every man who’d been toiling near the wall was accounted for, he brought his men back to fill the shaft.”
“I thank the lord Amon,” Bak said fervently. At least one task had been completed without mishap.
“The Lates is held sacred in Iunyt,” Ramose said, looking at the green amulet in Bak’s hand. Its exquisite workmanship was lost in the light of the torch Kasaya had stuck into the sand just outside the lean-to. “Could the man who wore this be from that city?”
Bak, seated on Ramose’s stool, eyed the small figure, wishing it could talk. “Possibly. Then again, it may’ve been one of many different kinds of amulets in the collar.”
“A missing element won’t be easy to spot.” Pashed settled himself beside Ramose, Hori, and Kasaya, seated on mats around Bak’s feet. “You’ve thought of a way to prevent the men from laying down their tools?”
“I thought to take advantage of their never-failing willing-ness to believe rumor rather than fact.” Bak leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I wish you, Ramose, to allow your son Ani to speak with Hori. I wish the two of them to be seen with their heads together, speaking softly, secretly. After Hori departs, Ani must whisper in several men’s ears, telling them he’s heard from one who would know that I found signs of a man on the cliff, and I know for a fact that he caused the rocks to fall. That he’s all along been deliberately planting fear in their hearts by causing many of the accidents that have befallen Djeser Djeseru.”
Ramose threw Bak a sharp look. “Such a tale will bring danger upon your head.”
“We must keep the men here, and we must stop the death and injury. I can think of no other way.”
Chapter Eight
“You’ve become foolhardy, my son.” Ptahhotep’s scowl left no doubt as to how much he disapproved of his offspring. “A man who brings about one accident after another, one who causes the death and injury of innocent people, won’t hesitate to slay you if he feels he must.”
“Not all the mishaps were deliberate.” Bak thanked the lord Amon that he had long ago outgrown the tendency to wiggle every time his parent reprimanded him. “Accidents happen all the time on construction sites. You know as well as I that many men who work in stone end their years with a disabled limb or a twisted back.”
“This is the second time that cliff face has fallen.” Ptahhotep, seated in the shade of a lean-to built atop his house, gave his son a stern look across a three-legged pottery brazier blackened and crusty from long use. The mound of charcoal inside, burned down to a reddish glow, was too small to throw off much heat. Nor had the lord Khepre risen high enough in the eastern sky to heat the day or melt the haze hanging over the river. “Tell me again how many men have dropped beneath the weight of its stones.”
He knew very well the answer to his question. Bak had told him less than an hour before. “The accidents must stop, Father. Not just those at the northern retaining wall, but all across the construction site.”
“And you must also find Montu’s slayer.” The physician poured warm honey into a small bowl of blue-green leaves and, using a knobbed piece of wood, began to crush them into a paste that gave off the musky fragrance of rue. “Could his death be in some way related to the accidents?”
Bak stood up and walked to the edge of the roof, where he could look down upon his horses. He could breathe easier with his father’s attention turned away from what he knew in his heart was a foolhardy plan. “Except for Kames, every tale I’ve heard thus far leads me to believe he asked to be slain, that he was killed because someone hated him.”
“You told me yourself he looked more a fool than a vil-lain.”
“His death was no accident, Father. He was struck on the head and dragged into the tomb. If not for the foreman’s fear of burying a man alive, he would have vanished forever. As he was meant to.”
Ptahhotep sprinkled a few drops of natron into the mix-ture and added a dollop of animal fat. “Could he have come upon the man who’s been causing these accidents?”
“I’d not be surprised. From what I’ve learned, he was slain after dark, and only then have men seen the malign spirit. But what was he doing at Djeser Djeseru in the dead of night? Was he not afraid, as everyone else is?”
“The workmen still spend each night in the valley.”
“After dark they stay close to their huts, where they have lamps and torches and each other’s company to give them courage.” Bak spotted Hori and Kasaya coming toward his father’s small house along a raised path between dessicated fields. “Not surprisingly, the malign spirit stays well clear of those huts.”
“Why must you refer to that vile criminal as a malign spirit?” Ptahhotep asked irritably. “He’s a man, and so you should describe him.”
“I use the words as a name, for I’ve no other name to call him.”
The physician grunted, not happy with the answer but unable or unwilling to come up with anything better.
