Face Turned Backward lb-2

by Lauren Haney

  “Did the crew ever leave the vessel all at the same time?”

  “Mahu never failed to post a guard, they say.”

  Finding nothing of substance in the stew, Bak tipped the bowl to his mouth and drank, swallowing mushy bits of fish, celery, chickpeas, and onions. A cold, wet nose nudged his thigh, a large sloppy tongue licked him. Giving the dog a wry smile, he set the bowl on the roof, scratched the animal’s thick neck, and stood up. “They had nothing on board that could be transported with ease except a few items in the deckhouse. I’ll wager the guards curled up inside and slept.”

  “I’ll not argue with you, my friend, but they say no.”

  The dog cleaned the bowl with a few loud smacks of his tongue. Barely pausing for breath, he swung half-around and dropped to his belly in front of Imsiba. A cat yowling in the street below failed to distract him.

  Picking up his beer jar, Bak walked to the edge of the roof and looked across the street at the building where Mahu’s slayer had vanished without a trace. He saw nothing but a solid wall, two stories of white-plastered mudbrick that revealed no secrets. Like Mahu’s crew. “Confine them on board the ship. A day or two of boredom should revive lost memories.”

  Imsiba laughed. “You’ve no sense of fair play, my friend.”

  Bak’s smile was fleeting. “Have you ever had a man die while he strode beside you? A man you’d made your prisoner? I could feel the touch of Mahu’s arm on mine, Imsiba, the warmth of his flesh. And then he fell.” Taking a final look across the street, he turned his back on the blank wall and the intense frustration he had felt when he found the slayer gone. “Ramose will return to Pahuro’s village tomorrow?”

  “He hopes to sail at first light.” Imsiba eyed Bak a moment as if to assure himself of his friend’s well-being. “He wanted to leave as soon as his deck was cleared, thinking to sail until darkness fell.” The Medjay set his bowl in front of the dog, who licked it clean in an instant, and plucked a half dozen dates from a makeshift package of leaves. “But Commandant Thuty has ordered that the wrecked ship be saved, so the last I saw of Ramose, he was treading on the heels of the chief scribe, urging him to soon find carpenters to travel north with him.”

  “He’s wise not to delay, lest he return to find the wounded vessel dismantled, carried off board by board. I doubt Pahuro would be so bold, with the eyes of authority aimed his way, but his isn’t the only village in the area.”

  “If they set sail at dawn, with luck and the help of the gods they’ll reach the village before midday.” Imsiba popped a date into his mouth. “The carpenters will remain, as will the soldiers who’ll see to their safety, but Ramose 78 / Lauren Haney will come back to Buhen the following day, his deck piled high with contraband.”

  “And here his ship must remain until I lay hands on Mahu’s slayer,” Bak said, his voice turning sour.

  “You’ll find him, my friend. You always do.”

  Bak had to smile. “When you speak those words, I know you mean them. When they come from Thuty, I take them as a threat.”

  Laughing, Imsiba collected the residue of their meal. The last of the color faded from the sky, quenching the bright reflection on the wall and leaving the rooftop in darkness.

  The two men, with the dog tagging behind, walked to a square of light and descended the stairway to the entry hall below. A torch mounted on the wall beside the street door cast light on the stairs and illuminated the large, unfurnished hall, where the two Medjays on night duty sat on the floor playing knucklebones, a game that seemed never to end, continuing from one watch to another, day in and day out.

  Bak had initially feared the wagering would lead to trouble, but the quantities bet remained small, the enthusiasm and good humor vast.

  Imsiba went off to assign men to the next day’s inspections at the harbor. Bak watched the game for a short time, then selected a dried twig from a basket filled with kindling, held it to the torch, and carried the flame into the adjoining room, which he used as an office. With the fire creeping toward his fingers, he lit the wicks in two baked clay lamps, small dishes filled with oil, supported on thigh-high tripods made of reeds.

  He hastened back to the entry hall and, as the flame licked his fingers, dropped the twig into a bowl of sand on the floor below the torch.

  Returning to his office, he dropped onto the woven mat Hori preferred to a stool and eyed the litter around him: scribal pallets, pens and inks, and writing materials had been shoved aside, providing space for lengths of papyrus fresh from the river, knife, mallet, burnisher, and glue. With a multitude of old documents always available for reuse in the scribal office building, he could not imagine why Hori was attempting to make his own scrolls.

  A basket piled high with sealed documents and a dozen or so grayish pottery jars from which additional scrolls protruded shared the upper surface of a mudbrick bench built the length of the back wall. Bak’s long spear and cowhide shield were stacked with Imsiba’s weapons against the wall to the left. The white coffin they had removed from Captain Roy’s ship had been set against the right-hand wall. It was so newly made Bak could smell the tangy scent of fresh-cut wood. Two three-legged stools, one upside-down on top of the other, stood near the door. Soon, he thought, there would be no space left for him.

  Imsiba arrived with two fresh jars of beer. Glancing at the littered floor and bench, he chuckled. “When first we met, I thought you a man of refined taste.”

  Bak merely grinned. “You spent some time with Roy’s crew, I noticed, during the voyage from Pahuro’s village.”

  Sobering, Imsiba handed over a jar, set the uppermost stool on the floor, and toed the second stool away from a thin ribbon of smoke coiling toward the door. Knucklebones clattered on the floor outside, one man laughed and another moaned.

  “They’re poor specimens, I can tell you. Irascible and coarse.” Imsiba broke the plug in his jar, dropped the pieces onto a pile of papyrus waste, and sat down. “Two faults they seem not to have: indolence and disloyalty. They’ve toiled long and hard together and have formed a rock-solid unit, with Captain Roy at the core. His death will in time tear them asunder, but not yet.”

  “He must’ve been generous to earn such loyalty.”

  “They show little sign of wealth now.”

  Bak waved off the objection. “Too many unlucky games of chance, a craving for women, a large family somewhere making frequent demands. I’ve seldom met a sailor who could hold onto so much as a handful of grain.” He scooted back against the bench and set his beer jar aside, unopened and unwanted. “What’d they have to say about their cargo?”

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  “They claim this is the first time they’ve carried contraband.”

  Bak raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “I know,” Imsiba said, “once a smuggler, always a smuggler. In this case, though, the reason they gave for Captain Roy’s willingness to take the risk has some merit.”

  “I yearn to hear it.”

  “I can only repeat what I was told.” Imsiba eyed the coffin with distaste. “Captain Roy had decided to leave Wawat forever, returning to his wife and family in Kemet. The crew was going with him, each and every man. This was to be their final voyage north from the Belly of Stones. The precious items they took on board would’ve given Roy the wealth to buy another, bigger ship at Abu, and his men a new berth, one much to their liking.”

  “A good excuse for law-breaking,” Bak admitted. “What kind of place did Pashenuro find to sequester them?”

  Imsiba smiled. “One I’d not enjoy. A house in the outer city. One not far from the animal paddocks, where few men live.”

  “He couldn’t have made a better choice,” Bak laughed.

  “Forced to enjoy only each other’s company, with the smell of manure perfuming the air and Buhen’s houses of pleasure just out of reach, they may decide that confessing the truth is more appealing than keeping their silence.”

  “So Pashenuro believed.”

  Bak st
ood up, stretched. “It’s been a long day, Imsiba, one I hope never to repeat.” He scowled at the clutter around his feet. “Hori will have to find another room to call his own.

  I’ll speak with him tonight.”

  A sharp hiss drew his attention to the entry hall. The two guards, one with his hand poised as if interrupted on the brink of casting the knucklebones, exchanged a meaningful glance and looked furtively at Bak. When they realized his eyes were on them, they hastily looked away, as men do when they have a guilty secret.

  “What’re they up to?” Bak asked Imsiba.

  “They’ve a bet, and it rests on your shoulders.”

  “Do I want to know the details?”

  “It’s simple enough,” the big Medjay laughed. “One man bet you’d throw Hori out in less than a week. The other said you’d let the boy stay longer. Now you’ve given them your decision.”

  Bak shook his head in amazement. “They’ll bet on anything.”

  “They will.” Imsiba’s smile faded, and he nodded toward the coffin. “Can we not find a better place for that?”

  “The entry hall is inappropriate. And we can’t move it into our men’s quarters. They’d rebel. Nor can we put it in the prison area, not with Rennefer in there. Her tongue’s sharp enough as it is, without giving her an object on which to hone it.”

  “She’s made no friends among those who stand guard, I can tell you.” Imsiba finished his beer and laid the jar on the floor. “The men long for the day you take her before Commandant Thuty and they’re rid of her.”

  “As soon as I can, I will. I’ve had no time yet to document her offense.” Bak stepped over Hori’s mess and looked down at the white man-shaped box. “Leave the coffin here. I’d not like it to remain forever, but a few days will make no difference.”

  “Who lies inside?” Imsiba asked, scrambling to his feet to stand beside him.

  Bak moved a lamp close and let his eye run down the band of symbols that ran the length of the coffin from the broad painted collar to the projecting foot. He had struggled through the inscription earlier, so the poorly drawn symbols came easier the second time. At the end of a simple offering formula, he found the name, which he read aloud.

  “Amonemopet, web priest in front of lord Khnum; son of Antef, scribe in the place of truth; son of house mistress Hapu.”

  “An ordinary man.” Imsiba let out a long, slow breath. “I thank the lord Amon for sparing us. I feared he might be a man of noble birth and no end of trouble.”

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  The following morning, Bak awakened close on sunrise with Rennefer uppermost in his thoughts. He rousted Hori from his sleeping pallet; they took bread, dates, and writing implements onto the roof; and in the cool of the early morning settled down to record the woman’s offense. With Bak dictating to the scribe, the document was soon completed and they went on to the next, an account of the wrecked ship and the contraband it had held. Half the morning passed and they were close to finishing a third report, one describing Mahu’s death, when Imsiba came to ask when they would see Sitamon. Bak hurried to the end of his task and he and the Medjay set off to an interview neither looked forward to.

  “I know nothing of Mahu’s business. If I’d been here longer, perhaps he’d have told me more.” Sitamon, seated on the floor beside an upright loom, made tiny pleats in the hem of her long shift, tucked modestly around her legs. “We were strangers, you see, just beginning to know each other after years of living apart.”

  “I understand,” Bak said, and he did. He rose from the chair she had brought for his use and wandered around the small courtyard. Sitting in stately luxury did not suit him.

  Sitamon, who had been expecting them, thanks to Tiya, had ushered them into a house of moderate size, with three rooms around an open court. The dwelling was neat and clean, the rooms bright, the few pieces of furniture of good quality. As the air was cooler outside, stirred by an erratic breeze, she suggested they talk in the courtyard. There they found a pale, thin child of perhaps four years, playing by himself near a round mudbrick oven, moving miniature boats across a make-believe river. Each time he thought no one was looking, he stared at the two men who had come to see his mother-soldiers, he must have thought, warriors.

  “Did your brother seem anxious about his upcoming voyage?” Bak asked. “Eager to be on his way? Worried about the delay and our inspection of his cargo?”

  “All of those and more.”

  He exchanged a quick glance with Imsiba, who knelt beside a spindly pole supporting a roof of loosely woven palm fronds, dry and rustling in the breeze.

  “Wouldn’t you be concerned if livestock made up the greatest portion of your cargo?” she asked. “Cattle and goats of the highest quality bound for Waset and a royal estate?

  He’d carried tribute many times, he told me, and often living creatures, yet he never failed to worry. What would he do if they all took sick and died? The ship was his, but would Maatkare Hatshepsut be content with that as repayment?”

  “Our sovereign isn’t known for her forgiving nature,” Imsiba said.

  Sitamon flashed a smile his way, thanking him for understanding. She was a small woman, delicate of build, with shoulder-length dark hair turned under at the ends. Her face was pale with shock and grief; dark smudges beneath her eyes spoke of a sleepless night. Imsiba, Bak noticed, could not take his eyes off her.

  “Did Mahu ever mention contraband?” Bak asked doggedly. “Or smuggling?”

  “Tiya told me of the elephant tusk you found.” Noticing the wrinkles in her hem, she clasped her hands firmly together in her lap. “I can’t explain it away, for you saw it with your own eyes. One thing I know for a fact: my brother would never have allowed it on his ship. He was an honest man.”

  “He swore he knew nothing of it,” Bak admitted, “neither could he account for its presence.”

  “Was he slain because of that tusk, do you think?”

  “Probably, but if he had no knowledge of it, why did he have to die?” Bak walked to the chair, stood behind it, and rested his hands on its back. He thought it best to be frank.

  “So far we know nothing. We’ve no trail to follow, no direction to take. We hoped you could set us on the right path.”

  Imsiba stood up, as if to better emphasize his words. “Can you remember anything, mistress Sitamon? Anything at all that might help?”

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  The child, his eyes wide open, stared at the big Medjay with unconcealed awe.

  “Maybe…” She paused, shook her head. “He did say something, but…” Her voice tailed off; she frowned.

  Bak slipped around the chair and sat down. A speck of hope took form in his breast, yearning to grow. Imsiba stood rock-still, his face equally intent.

  “I couldn’t sleep last night,” Sitamon said. “My thoughts went round and round, touching on all we talked about since I came to Buhen. Seven days ago, that was. Not long enough to know if a man laughs because a joke is truly funny, or if he makes a joke because he doesn’t want to see the truth.”

  Bak leaned toward her, willing her to come up with at least one grain of gold in an otherwise sterile desert. “What did he say, mistress? We need to know.”

  Her eyes strayed toward Imsiba, whose smile seemed to reassure her. “It happened the day before he sailed to Kor.

  I’d been here only a day and we hadn’t yet grown accustomed to each other’s company. Mahu had lived alone for many years, and I suppose three people in this house seemed a crowd to him. To make matters worse, Tety, my son, was tired and cranky. Whiny, if the truth be told. So, soon after our evening meal, Mahu went out for a while. To meet with friends, he said, and play a game or two of chance.” She smiled wanly. “To surround himself with men, I was sure, and escape for a while the domestic bliss he’d unwittingly let himself in for.” Her smile was strained; tears clung to her lashes.

  “Early the next morning, before he set sail, he said a man he knew had whispered in his
ear the night before, suggesting he haul illicit cargo, making promises of great wealth. He laughed then, saying the approach had been a joke, not a serious attempt to lead him down a wrong path. I accepted his easy dismissal as fact, but now…” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat and went on, “Now I think he erred.”

  Bak agreed. The man who approached Mahu must have hidden the tusk in the sail. As long as the captain lived, he could and no doubt would point a finger and lay blame.

  What better reason for murder? As if reading his thoughts, Imsiba caught his eye and nodded.

  “What was the man’s name?” Bak asked, keeping his voice kind, sympathetic, unexcited. “Did he say?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Did he say where he met his friends and who they were?”

  “He mentioned no one by name; I wouldn’t have known them anyway.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “I do know he went to a house of pleasure. A place run by a woman. She has a lion cub, he told me, and a young male slave to care for the creature.”

  “Nofery!” Bak said. “The gods at last have smiled on us!”

  And indeed they had. Nofery was his informer, his spy, an old woman who knew everyone in Buhen and missed nothing. One man whispering in another’s ear would have attracted her attention like an unplugged jar of honey would draw ants.

  Bak and Imsiba hurried down the narrow lane, scarcely able to believe their good luck. They edged past two soldiers walking at a more moderate speed, and a man they took to be a trader. Ahead they saw the open portal to Nofery’s house of pleasure and the young lion seated on its haunches on the threshold. A thin, roiling cloud of dust rushed up the lane, pushed before a stiffening breeze. The lion sneezed and ducked out of sight.