He hung back, thinking she meant to usher him to the pavilion, to embarrass him before her guests. To place him there before he chose to show himself. Instead she drew him into Nakht’s bedchamber. Bed, chests, and stools had been set upright and tidied since Heby’s invasion. The room looked much as it had when Bak had searched it after the commandant’s death. Long, thin shafts of sunlight filtered in through slits in the woven reed mat covering the courtyard door. The voices outside were clearly audible.
“I’ve no intention of running away.” Azzia spoke slightly above a whisper so those in the courtyard could not hear, but with grim intensity. “I’m not so foolish as to make myself look guilty of a crime I didn’t commit.”
She had never before touched him, and all he could think about was her hand, so warm and firm, clutching his arm. “I can’t leave you unguarded. You know that.”
“Are you so certain I took my husband’s life?”
“I’ve tried to find proof of your innocence, that I swear.” It came out too loud, too defensive. “I’ve run out of time, as you well know.”
Her hand dropped to her side; she turned away and walked to Nakht’s bed. Beyond, through the doorway to her bedchamber, he saw a rush basket half full of clothing and linen standing beside an open, empty chest, mute reminders that she had been packing for her trip to Ma’am.
She picked up a folded camp stool leaning against the wall and faced him. Holding the stool before her like a shield, she said, “I no longer know what to think of you, Officer Bak. Sometimes I believe all you say. At other times I feel your words have no more substance than the mist that drifts over the river each morning.”
“Go back to your friends.” His tone was harsh, his dismay well hidden. She had every right to mistrust him, if not for the reason she thought.
Crossing the room, she pulled the stool open and set it in front of the mat. “If it pleases you to watch me through the day, sit here. I’ll have Lupaki bring you food and drink.”
She slipped out the door without another word. Bak slumped onto the stool, humiliated and depressed. The lady Hathor, goddess of happiness, had to be playing a game with him. She had dangled Azzia before him and teased him with her beauty, but made it impossible for him to reach out to her.
The minutes stretched to hours. Except for Iry, who remained through the afternoon, Azzia’s friends came and went: women and their offspring, scribes, officers, chief craftsmen. A few seemed merely curious, but most paid their respects and offered their support with a sincerity that made Bak’s suspicions seem petty and unfounded. Azzia rarely glanced his way, but when she did, he felt his stomach knot with guilt.
Not one of the four men he hoped to attract had come. He knew if he were the guilty one he would wait until late in the day in hopes of finding Azzia alone, but he could not understand why the innocent among them, men who professed to care for her, had not rushed to her side.
The voices droned on and on. Bak’s sleepless night began to catch up with him and he reached a point where he could barely hold his eyes open. He stood up, stretched, flexed his muscles. The activity helped, but not much. He wandered around, looking for something to keep him awake, finally stopping in front of a reddish hardwood chest. It had held, he remembered, several personal documents, all related to Nakht’s tomb and some land in the north of Kemet. Before, he had read a few words, enough to dismiss them as unimportant. But now…
Curious to know more, especially since Azzia had no doubt inherited Nakht’s estate, he removed the lid, took the scrolls, and carried them to his stool by the door.
As he sat down, he heard her say, “I don’t fear death, for only then can I walk beside my husband through eternity, but to think I might die accused of taking his life is an abomination.”
Mistress Iry, Bak thought, must have lost control of the conversation.
“The viceroy is a fair man, my dear, and wiser than most,” a deep-voiced man assured her. “He’ll judge you innocent, I know.”
“What can that young officer, that Bak, be thinking of?” The voice was Iry’s.
Bak dropped the scrolls in his lap and peeked through a slit in the mat. Iry’s face wore a disparaging scowl, as did most of the others’. Azzia looked straight ahead, taking care not to glance his way.
“He’s a soldier.” This from a thin, stooped man with the white cloud of blindness in one eye. “They’re taught to obey orders, not to use their wits.”
The man must be a scribe, Bak thought, one who knows nothing of the art of war.
Iry patted Azzia’s hand. “No one with good sense could think you guilty of taking another’s life. Certainly not Nakht, whom you loved so long and so well.”
“Kames told me he was sent here in disgrace,” said a distinguished-looking man of middle years who wore a calf-length kilt. “Something to do with a house of pleasure. A brawl, I believe.”
“A fight over a loose woman, I heard,” a full-figured, bewigged matron said, sniffing her disapproval.
“From what I heard, his archer wagered away his weapons of war in a game of chance and Officer Bak took exception.” The deep-voiced man sipped from his drinking bowl. “You know how those chariotry officers are: as protective of their archers as a goose is of her goslings.”
“You’d be protective, too, if your life depended upon the one man riding in the chariot with you.” The speaker was a large, muscular man of military bearing. “Without his archer, a charioteer wouldn’t last through a single assault.”
“That doesn’t excuse his involving the rest of the men in his company,” the deep-voiced man said.
“I’d guess they involved themselves. Those charioteers are a close-knit bunch of men.”
Azzia reached out to pluck a date from a greenish glazed bowl sitting on the low table in front of her. “My husband thought him an honorable man in spite of his rash behavior in Waset.” She raised her eyes from the bowl and looked straight at Bak’s hiding-place. “I pray he judged him right.”
Bak squirmed on his stool, spilling the scrolls to the floor.
“Honor is one thing,” the stooped man said. “Good common sense is quite different. And that he seems not to have.”
“My husband’s equally witless,” Iry said, disgusted. “He won’t listen to one word from me.”
A plump young woman of about fourteen years giggled. “Officer Bak is very handsome and well formed. To share a sleeping pallet with a man so favored…” She shivered with ecstasy.
The matron gave her a scathing look. “You’d do well to covet a man who thinks with his wits, not with his male parts.”
Bak cursed beneath his breath. Did Azzia also think him such a fool? Her face was turned away, so he could not see her expression. Beyond her he glimpsed Ruru, whose head was bowed, his shoulders shaking with laughter.
Bak snatched the scrolls from the floor and marched into Azzia’s bedchamber. Rejecting her sleeping pallet for a stool, he spread the first document across his lap. It proved to be a legal agreement between Nakht and a cousin who lived near Mennufer. In exchange for a parcel of farmland Nakht had been given as a reward for exemplary military service, the cousin had agreed to have Nakht’s tomb excavated and its walls painted. The next four scrolls, all from the cousin, discussed the progress of the construction. In each, he complained bitterly about the cost, airing his grievances to a point where Bak could almost hear him whine.
The final scroll was another legal document, written after the tomb was finished. To repay his cousin for the unexpectedly high costs, Nakht had given him the remainder of his estate: a second, adjoining piece of land. As a condition of the transfer, the cousin would take Azzia into his household if anything should happen to Nakht.
Bak rolled up the scrolls with a heavy heart. Such a nebulous position would not please any woman. Had she become involved with the man who was stealing the gold to save herself from such a fate?
Chapter Eleven
The shadows lengthened across the courtyard; the sun nudged the western battlements. A stiffening breeze cooled the air, drying the moisture on faces and backs and arms. The reeds atop the pavilion rustled as if inhabited by mice. The leaves on the potted trees danced. Azzia’s guests departed in ones and twos until none but Iry remained. She was on her feet, preparing to leave.
Bak could hardly wait for her departure and the chance to escape from this room in which Azzia had
