smelled much the same as the poultice on Bak’s back. “First he made the cliff face fall upon you and now he’s wrecked your father’s boat.”
“He’d better fear me.” Bak’s voice was harsh, angry. The horse, snorting surprise, jerked backward. “I’m a policeman, trained as a soldier. I can take care of myself. But my father’s a physician, a man no longer young and vigorous. I’m very much troubled by the fact that he’s been brought into this.”
“He was an innocent bystander, surely!”
“Was he?” Wrinkling his nose at the strong, musky odor of the salve, Bak gently rubbed it into the tender spot. “The fishing boat was moored near the quay where he always leaves his skiff. Was it waiting in the expectation that I would sail home with him? Or was it waiting for him alone and I was an added bonus? Was he meant to be injured or slain as a warning to me?”
“I want my father guarded at all times, sir,” Bak said, concluding his tale of the previous evening’s events.
“Why do you come to me?” Commander Maiherperi, a slender man of forty or so years, eyed Bak with an intensity that would have made a younger, greener man uneasy. His woolly hair and dusky skin spoke of mixed blood; the scar across his cheek told of a man who had earned his lofty position. “Amonked brought you into this. Why not go to him?”
“I did. He suggested I speak with you. You stand at the head of the men who guard the royal house; therefore, you stand apart from all other forms of military and civil authority.” A wry smile formed on Bak’s lips. “He also believes you owe me a favor.”
The commander, seated on a chair on a low dais, allowed himself a slight smile. “Because I tore you from the army to place you at the head of a company of Medjay police? Because I sent you to Buhen when our sovereign ordered you exiled? Has he not seen how you’ve thrived on the frontier?”
The chamber, central to the guards’ barracks inside the walls surrounding the royal house and grounds in Waset, was of imposing proportions. Its lofty ceiling was supported by four tall pillars, and air circulating through high windows kept the space cool. The odors of leather and sweat served as a constant reminder of generations of armed and armored men who had come to report to and receive orders from their commander. Other than two tough-looking guards flanking the wide, double doors behind him, Bak and Maiherperi were the sole men present. Their words resonated through the huge, almost empty space.
“We spent more than a month together on the Belly of Stones, sir. We came to know each other quite well.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Bak was not surprised the commander knew of
Amonked’s adventures in Wawat. The officer’s knowledge was legendary. It had to be, for he was responsible for the safety of the royal house and the well-being of their sovereign and all she held dear.
Maiherperi adjusted the pillow behind him and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know your father, Lieutenant, but from what I’ve heard of him, he’ll not be pleased to have an escort keeping him company day after day.”
“I can see no other way. If the man I seek thinks to hurt me through him, or to intimidate me, he and our small farm must not go unprotected.”
“I agree. The accidents at Djeser Djeseru must be stopped, and what your father desires is of no importance. He’ll have to put up with a guard until you succeed in your mission.”
Normally Bak would have urged caution, warning the commander that he sooner or later might fail to lay hands on a man he sought. Not this time, however. He would catch the malign spirit if it took all his remaining days.
“I wish you to have a lean-to set up in the old temple of Djeserkare Amonhotep and his esteemed mother Ahmose Nefertari,” Bak said to Hori. They were walking with Kasaya up the causeway that would take them to Djeser Djeseru. “You must position it in a place of privacy, where no man can come close without being seen. Equip it with a low stool, a mat upon which a man can sit, and plentiful jars of beer.”
“Yes, sir?” The question in the scribe’s voice mirrored the curiosity on his face.
“You’ve talked with many men who’ve seen or been a victim of an accident here at Djeser Djeseru. While you set up the lean-to, I’ll speak with your friend Ani. Then you must bring those men to me one after another. I wish to learn more of these mishaps firsthand.”
“Yes, sir.” Hori hurried on up the causeway and across the terrace, passing a gang of workmen towing a sledge on which lay a twice-life-size limestone statue of Maatkare Hatshepsut wrapped for eternity. How they could toil so hard on so hot a day, Bak could not begin to guess.
“Now, Kasaya, untie this bandage. It’ll draw too many curious eyes, too many questions.”
“Yes, sir. Montu was always after me to do things for him.
Run errands mostly.” Ani, seated on his mat beneath the scribes’ lean-to, poured a couple drops of water onto a cake of black ink and mixed it in with a stiff brush. “I sometimes gathered broken bits of pottery and limestone chips for him, but I’ve no way of knowing if those you found in his home were those I gave him.”
Bak, seated on the stool, was glad he had found the boy alone. He doubted Ramose would have interfered, but the garrulous old man Amonemhab would have added his thoughts, wanted or unwanted. “I was told he took them home a week or two ago.”
The boy screwed up his face, thinking. “I’m not sure, sir.
Could you describe some of the sketches? I might remember them.”
As Bak complied, a drop of sweat trickled down the side of his face. Not a breath of air stirred across Djeser Djeseru, and heat lay over the valley like a heavy pallet stuffed with wool newly cut from a sheep. His back itched, the abrasion irritated by sweat. With the bandage gone, few men had commented, and those who did had assumed his back, like his thigh, had been scraped raw during the rock slide.
The trial copies of gods and offerings were commonplace, it seemed, with few special enough to remember, but the moment Bak began to describe the comic sketches, Ani’s frown cleared and a smile broke across his face. “I remember! I took them from the trash heap between the foundation of the new shrine to the lady Hathor and the old temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep.”
Bak smiled with him, momentarily sharing the boy’s enjoyment of the rough humor, but quickly sobered. “Do you remember seeing the neck of a broken jar with a sketch of a honey bee on it? Similar to this?” With the tip of his baton, he drew in the sand by his feet a crude jar with a necklace from which hung a pendant bee.
Ani studied it, shook his head. “It might’ve been there, sir, but I didn’t notice it.”
“Tell me of the accident.” Bak sat down on the low stool and pointed with his baton at the reed mat on the ground in front of him. “Leave nothing out. The smallest detail could be important.”
The man, a workman named Mery, looked wary of sharing the shaded space with the officer, not because he feared questions, Bak suspected, but because he was unaccustomed to the company of men of authority. He was one of the multitude who toiled day after day, moving heavy and unwieldy objects from one place to another.
With visible reluctance, he ducked low and seated himself before Bak. Dust clung to the sweat on his body, making him look a part of the earth. “What can I tell you, sir, that I’ve not already told your scribe?”
Bak kept his breathing shallow, measured. Mery was much in need of a swim. The faint breeze that had arisen could not clear away the smell of the man. It completely overpowered the faint musty odor of the broken mudbrick walls of the small temple of Djeserkare Amonhotep and his mother Ahmose Nefertari.
Laying his baton across his knees, he pulled a beer jar from the basket beside his stool and handed it to the workman. “I want to hear of the accident from your own lips, Mery, not from those of another man.”
“Yes, sir.” Surprised by the offering, Mery rearranged his thin buttocks on the mat, broke out the dried mud plug, and gulped noisily from the jar. “We were pulling a statue of our sovereign, a big one. Big and heavy. A twin to the one we were moving when your scribe came to get me a short while ago. Finished except for being painted. Ready to raise in its assigned place.”
“It was meant to stand in the temple?”
“Yes, sir. Outside the sanctuary door.” Mery drank again and licked the moisture from his lips. “We’d hauled it as far as the bottom of the ramp and left it there overnight. It was on a sledge, like the one we’re using today.” His hand tightening around the jar, he cleared his throat. “That morning, the morning of the accident, a man poured water on the ramp ahead of the sledge, making the slope slick, and we began to pull it. I’d guess there were twenty or so of us and we were moving right along. It happened when we were more than halfway to the top.”
“Go on,” Bak prompted. The tale was hard to tell, he could see, but he had to hear it.
