“Yes,” Neferperet said in a hoarse voice. “Yes, it’s Heby.”
He backed away from the thigh-high stone embalming table, his eyes locked on the naked body lying in the deep tray carved into its upper surface. Neferperet was a big man, heavy and muscular, a man of thirty or so years respected for his strength, but during the short time he had been in the house of death, his face had turned a sickly green. Bak suspected his own visage looked no healthier. The hot, clammy air, the suffocating odor, the eerie shadows trembling in the lamplight assaulted the senses and made him feel as if he had already set one foot in the netherworld.
Neferperet swallowed hard, swung around, and rushed past a table containing the body of an old man, stomach slit barely enough to admit a hand, innards lying in a stone bowl on the floor. He plowed through the door and vanished from sight. Bak, close behind, got no farther than the portal, where his path was barred by Min, the freckled, red-haired scribe responsible for maintaining the records in the house of death.
“We need more than his name, Officer Bak,” Min said, his manner officious.
Bak edged past him into the adjoining room, crossed to the far wall, and stopped beside a deep stack of sparkling white, neatly folded linen. Even there, he could not evade the smell of death, the taste.
“I doubt Neferperet went beyond the courtyard,” he said, working hard not to show his discomfort. “He’s the chief goldsmith, the man Heby toiled for.”
Min screwed up his mouth in disapproval. “I’ve no interest in the slain man’s personal habits, sir. I need to know of his family and the way they wish him to be prepared for eternity.”
“Men talk of death as well as life while they toil.” Bak sidled to the door that would take him out of the building. His eyes darted toward another room. On a table similar to the one Heby occupied, he saw a form cocooned in natron, the white salty substance used to dry the body. Nakht, he thought.
“We can do nothing on word of mouth alone,” Min snapped. “You must go immediately to the scribal office building and return with his personal record. Only then will we know for a fact whether he’s to be fully prepared for interment in a tomb in Kemet or left as he is for immediate burial here.”
Bak wondered if this self-important scribe was always so impertinent or if he had heard the gossip about the Medjays and thought he could behave as he liked with their officer. “I have much to do,” he said curtly. “I’ll have the record brought to you when I can, possibly today, more likely tomorrow.”
He pivoted and hurried along a short corridor to the exit. The courtyard, though shaded by sycamores and palms along each wall, was as hot as the inside of a cooking pot simmering on a brazier, but at least the air was free of stench. He allowed himself the luxury of several deep breaths before crossing to Neferperet, seated in the shade on a mudbrick bench beside a small fish pool. A dozen fingerling perch darted among the stems of a lotus plant beneath open white blossoms floating among the leaves on the water’s surface.
The goldsmith stared at his scarred, work-hardened hands, clasped tight between his knees. “I thought myself a man, but after this…”
“Say no more. Those who toil here seem not to mind, but I, for one, have neither the nose nor the stomach for the house of death.”
Bak sat beside Neferperet and bent over the pool, allowing the sweet scent of the flowers to drive away the odor clinging to his nostrils. He was sure Heby had stolen the gold, but he needed proof. From what he had seen of Tetynefer, the steward would prefer to believe a foreign woman guilty of murder rather than admit that gold taken from beneath his very nose had brought about two deaths. Bak was also convinced Heby had been slain because of the gold. But one who made no friends would never be tempted to confide, so who had learned his secret? This man Neferperet? Or another who toiled in the same workshop?
“What can you tell me of Heby?” he asked.
“He was a skilled craftsman and a diligent worker. He…” Neferperet hesitated, gave a too elaborate shrug, smiled. “He was like any other man who knows his craft well.”
“He was friendly and good-humored? Well-liked and respected by all who knew him?”
The goldsmith’s smile thinned. “He wasn’t a man to make friends easily, but…yes, he was respected.”
“I’ve heard him called sullen.”
Neferperet’s laugh held no humor. “I should’ve known you’d talk to others before me.”
Bak made no comment, letting the goldsmith think what he would. A breath of warm air, the first all day, caressed his moist forehead. The leaves on the trees danced and whispered. A bee buzzed in an arc over the pool to land on a fragrant blossom and bury itself in pollen. A tiny green frog, no bigger than a thumbnail, leaped from one leaf to another and splashed into the water.
“You heard right,” Neferperet admitted. “I wished many times I had ten men with his skill and none with his disposition.”
“Had he no friends among the other goldsmiths?”
“They’re an easygoing lot and they tried, but he’d have none of it. So they let him go his own way. None will mourn him, I can tell you.”
“And you?”
Neferperet frowned at his callused hands, rubbed them together. “I’m sorry he met so violent an end and sorrier to lose so skilled a worker, but as for the man himself?” He shrugged. “He did his task well and he knew it. He wanted no other to tell him what must be done.”
“Yet as his superior,” Bak prompted, “you couldn’t let him do as he pleased all the time.”
“I put up with him for a week and then…” The goldsmith balled his right hand into a fist and held it up. “He was heavier than I am, but older and softer. I taught him to listen.”
“How long ago was that?”
“One year, no more.”
It took all Bak’s will to contain his excitement. According to the scrolls Azzia had given him, the stealing had begun a year ago. He eyed Neferperet, who seemed as honest and open as Hori’s puppy. As chief goldsmith, he should have noticed something amiss. Yet he had reported no thefts, no suspicions. Which meant he was not as innocent as he seemed or Heby’s method of taking the gold was so clever that a master craftsman had been deceived. If so, how could he, Bak, hope to learn how it was done?
Shaking off self-doubt, he asked, “What brought Heby to Buhen? I’d think so skilled a craftsman would’ve toiled in Waset for the royal house.”
“A man like him in so exalted a place?” Neferperet laughed, contemptuous. “He’d have lasted less than a week.”
Bak heard the quick patter of approaching footsteps. Min, looking none too happy, was hurrying across the courtyard.
The scribe stopped at the edge of the pool. “Sir, will you speak without delay to the man who holds Heby’s personal record?” All pretense of authority had vanished.
“I’ll go when I have the time.”
“Today, I beg you! If he’s not to be embalmed, if he’s to be laid to rest in a local cemetery…” Min hesitated, flushed a bright crimson. “With the days so hot…you must understand, sir. He cannot long be kept here.”
Bak smothered a smile. “You’ll have my message before the sun drops below the fortress wall.”
Min thanked him profusely and hurried back inside.
He had barely vanished from sight when Neferperet began to laugh. “It seems those who toil in the house of death have no more stomach for it than we.”
Bak’s laughter was short-lived. A visit to the scribal offices would lead to an interview with Tetynefer, an interview he dreaded. He had reported at first light the intruder in the commandant’s residence, and the steward had been none too pleased to hear a Medjay guard had failed to perform his duty. How would he react when he learned a Medjay spear had been found in Heby’s breast?
Bak refused to dwell on that. “How was Heby yesterday?”
“Sullen.” Neferperet appeared to like the word. “Sullen, as always.”
Bak tried to imagine how he would feel if he planned to enter and search a building inhabited by four people and guarded by a policeman. “Did he act like a man afraid, or one whose thoughts were on another task or in another place?”
The goldsmith hunched over to stare at the pool. “He was sullen as usual, but…” Having found the words he sought, he nodded. “Yes, he was like the lions the men of Kush bring in cages from far to the south. He struck out in anger at all who came near.”
