City of the Dead (13 page)

“Grand Vizier!” The words were shouted in seeming anger, and I turned, surprised to find that I had reached the meeting stone and that my three men were already there. De’de stood with hands on his hips, his lips tightened in annoyance. His eyes were painted dramatically today, swept upward with green malachite. “Did you not hear me?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I—my mind was occupied.”

De’de cocked his head. “While your mind is occupied, this project is falling apart.”

“What’s falling apart?”

Khons spoke first. “The limestone in Tura has slowed.”

“Tura as well? What is going on?”

Khons shrugged. “We received a message from Ako, and his only explanation was that the stonemasons have encountered a design problem.”

“How close are we to having—”

“Not close enough. Fifty-six thousand stones either here or still in Tura.”

I cursed.

Sen leaned into the conversation. “If the stone haulers here continue at their current pace, the slowdown in Tura won’t make any difference. They’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

I shielded my eyes from the sun and squinted up at the pyramid. As always, it crawled from its base to its flat top with thousands of laborers. “I don’t understand. Why has worked here slowed?”

A dry gust kicked sand toward us, and Sen coughed before speaking. “As best I can tell, it’s simply a morale problem. The men are tired. We’ve been at it for several years, and the project doesn’t look even half finished. They’re losing their heart for it.”

I pounded my staff into the ground like a hammer. “Don’t the fools realize that in accomplishing one fourth the height, we’ve already placed half the stones? From here, it’s—”

“Perhaps they do not,” Sen said. “But I do not think a lecture on architecture is what they need.”

I turned on Sen. “And what
do
you think they need?”

The older man lifted his eyebrows at my tone.

I sighed and scratched my head. “I’m sorry. I have many things on my mind. Do you have a suggestion?”

De’de interrupted. “It is not simply a matter of fatigue,” he said. “I hear the murmuring in the village. They are frustrated by all the changes of plans. First, the underground chamber is abandoned, after the best of them spent many months cramped in tiny spaces, chiseling out the bedrock and hauling it up the corridor.”
He stroked his chin as though the artificial beard of authority were strapped there. “Now labor is being diverted to the queen’s pyramid. On top of that, they do not think it propitious that the Overseer of Constructions and the Great Wife have both crossed to the west within days of each other.”

“The Scourge of Anubis,” Khons ventured.

I glared at him and he said no more.

“If I may, I have an idea,” Sen said, and I waved a hand at him. “What about a competition? Between work gangs. We could establish targets—a certain number of stones laid per day, for example— and any gang that meets its goal will be given extra rations of food and beer. Or it could be a contest between gangs, as to which works most quickly.”

I glanced at Khons and De’de to solicit their thoughts.

“Could work,” Khons grunted.

De’de shrugged one shoulder. “I suppose it is worth trying. The men do love their rations.”

Sen nodded. “I will set it up. But, Grand Vizier, I’ll need your help in setting benchmarks. I’m not yet familiar enough with the plans.”

I rubbed my eyes, gritty with sand.

It was too much. Supply problems, morale decline, changing plans, and two murders to unravel. How was I supposed to keep it all under control?

When I cleared my eyes and looked up, my brother Ahmose stood at the meeting stone. His head was bare and he wore no makeup. It could mean only one thing.

Our father was dead.

* * *

There are things a son must do, regardless of convenience or expediency. Among these is that one must care for his parents, in life and in death. Though Ahmose would prefer to think that he alone attended to our father, the truth is that my position provided ongoing security for him. And I loved our father.

And so I left Sen to deal with the work gangs and promised Khons that I would see to the problem with the Tura quarry. Questions regarding Merit’s death, questions for Neferet and the People of the One, would have to wait. There was a tomb well south, in Meidum, that required inspecting by the two sons of the man who would be buried there, beside his wife who had preceded him to the fields of the afterlife.

Ahmose and I trudged aboard the barque of Pharaoh himself the next morning. It was gracious of Khufu to insist we take it, and the boat had been brought to the pyramid harbor for us, manned by Khufu’s ten brawny oarsmen.

My brother tossed a parcel into the cabin in the center of the barque and went to stand in the stern, facing east, toward the harbor’s entrance. I loaded my own belongings into the cabin but did not approach Ahmose. We had spoken little since he had informed me that our father had crossed.

The boat was long and narrow, only ten cubits across, with room for the small center cabin and a slot on each side for five oarsmen. The front of the boat jutted far in front of me, however, with its long-horned prow ready to cut through the current as we traveled upriver. The pilot hopped across several minutes later with
a nod to me. He was a bulky specimen who looked as though he had spent part of his life at the oars. He grabbed the acacia pole that lay in the hull and moved to the port side near Ahmose.

“How long will it take?” my brother asked. “To Meidum.”

The pilot studied the water, then the sky. “With a favorable wind, we should make it by this time tomorrow. If the wind leaves us …” He shrugged and left his thought unfinished.

We were soon off, through the harbor, down the canal, and out onto the Nile. I had not often traveled the river during the flood season, when the farmers were conscripted to work on the pyramid. The river seemed as wide as the earth today, with palms jutting from the water as though they floated there like overgrown lotus flowers.

Ahmose retreated to the cabin and sat beside me. I did not pretend, even to myself, that the gesture was friendly. There was simply no place else to sit.

I pulled some dried beef from my pouch, tore off a leathery piece, and offered the rest to Ahmose.

“Thank you,” he said. It was a beginning.

The oarsmen worked their rhythm, and the sound of the oars plopping into the water in unison was like a lullaby.

“Do you think we will find it still well kept?” I asked.

He chewed the beef slowly. “Since Sneferu abandoned the Meidum pyramid, and had father build him two more at Saqqara, there is no greater tomb at Meidum than that of our parents. I have made certain that it is well cared for.”

“
You
have made certain?”

Ahmose snorted and looked at me. “What did you think, Hemi? That we could simply bury our mother there and walk away, with no further thought? It has taken ongoing payments to ensure
the preservation of her tomb and chapel. I have seen to it. I know you are busy.”

“Ahmose, I—”

He scratched his forehead, eyes closed. “There is nothing to say, Hemi.”

“Let me speak.”

A heavy sigh was his only response.

“I want to thank you for all you have done for Father. You have been a good son. I am sorry for what I have lacked.”

Ahmose lifted an eyebrow and turned slightly toward me but said nothing.

The boat sliced neatly through the water, and the pilot raised the mast that would help the oarsmen propel us upriver. We sat in silence. The sun burned hot, but the breeze cooled my upturned face and carried the smells of wet earth and marshy water.

The pyramid drifted away behind us, until it was a watery illusion on the edge of the desert. I should have felt anxiety at leaving the project, but instead I felt nothing, and the pressing reality of Father’s death fell on me.

I had neglected him, perhaps. But everything was for him, really. The harbor, the valley temple, the pyramid, the causeway and mortuary temple yet to come. I directed men and raised stone, all to please my father.

And now he had gone to the west, where none of my achievements could reach him. I was wearing myself out to earn rations that would never be distributed. A hopelessness stole over me, a realization that everything I worked for was meaningless. I shoved the thought away with all the strength of will I could marshal.

The day wore on with nothing to mark the time but the passing of villages, like floating islands in the floodplain, with dykes as
their roads. Villagers waved as we passed and ran down the canal banks to get a closer look at the royal barque and its passengers.

We slept in snatches in the cabin and awoke in the morning to the grim face of the pilot.

“Dead calm,” he said.

“Now what?”

The pilot moved along the line of men, his hand gripping shoulders as he passed. “We will push on with only the power of the men, but it will be slow going.”

With no wind and the prospect of a lengthened trip, Ahmose and I grew restless and irritable. “Perhaps you should take a turn at the oars!” Ahmose said when I complained about the speed. “Perhaps you could do it better, just as you do everything better.”

Some time later I tried to engage Ahmose in a remembrance of happier times with our father, when we were young boys. He would not be pulled in.

“I do not think you really want to begin reminiscing,” he said in a tone low and threatening.

I retreated to the other side of the boat, and kept to myself. But the gods would not allow us to live in peace on such a tiny piece of wood for two days, and it wasn’t long before we were angry again. Ahmose had tried to pass me on the narrow boat, I got in his way, we collided and lost our balance, and suddenly we were shoving at each other.

The pilot yelled. His warning was like spitting on a bonfire.

Ahmose went down first. I would have walked away, but he used a leg to sweep my feet from under me. I fell on him, and he rolled to pin me under. River water pooled beneath my head and soaked into my clothes.

Ahmose straddled my chest, his hands at my throat.

I welcomed the attack. The years of silent hate and subtle innuendo had eaten at me like worms at a carcass.

“Say it, Ahmose! Say whatever it is you have wanted to say these many years!”

But he would not. By Hathor’s bloody horns, even now, he would not. Instead he pushed off me, left me there in the hull, crossed into the cabin, and shoved the door panel closed.

I did not move for some time. The pilot came and stood over me, perhaps to ensure that I still lived, then moved away.

I studied the solid blue of the sky and considered that one day, perhaps even today, my brother might kill me.

The wind increased, the oarsmen pushed forward, and we reached Meidum in the late afternoon of the second day. The lush plains here extended beyond the floodwater, to the foot of Sneferu’s first pyramid.

We disembarked and began the short walk, swigging beer from jugs.

“It must seem small to your eyes,” Ahmose said, “now that you build one so grand.”

I looked ahead at the first true pyramid and steadied my voice. “Those who built before us taught us all we know. We build on their foundation and would achieve nothing without their accomplishments.”

When we were still a slight distance from the pyramid, we reached the twin mastabas, joined at the sides, of Itet and Neferma’at. Together the flat-topped buildings stretched back toward the pyramid, and far to the left and right. A squared doorway opened into each tomb chapel. I had forgotten how large the complex was. In unspoken agreement, we first headed to our father’s chapel.

We found all in order, as Ahmose had said. An aged priest led us through the heavy silence of the meandering passageways. The wall paintings had been completed in vivid color. The underground tomb chamber located at the center of the mastaba was blocked by a slab of granite. Ahmose and I worked together to slide it across while the priest disappeared and returned with a torch. We then descended into the tomb chamber and found more stunning decoration and a sarcophagus ready to receive its guest.

“Send word ahead,” the priest said, “when the seventy days are completed and you approach. We will be ready with mourners and priests.”

“We will bring mourners with us,” Ahmose said. “All of Egypt grieves the loss of Neferma’at.”

“Of course.” The priest bowed his head.

Ahmose gave further instructions about the sacrifices to be made in the tomb chapel, and about the guards to be posted near the mastaba. I let him take the lead, as eldest son and the one who had seen to these details thus far. I moved away, examining the chapel. The smell of river water and sour beer clung to me, and I wished for a bath and perfumes.

When we were satisfied that all would be ready for our father’s arrival, we passed out of the tomb chapel into the sunlight again, squinting. We moved along to the second entrance, into our mother’s tomb chapel.

I had not been here in years. Carved reliefs, filled in with brightly colored pastes, covered the walls of musty chambers from floor to ceiling. It was still a beauty to behold. Strange as it might seem, my mother had loved this chapel as she oversaw its construction and decoration. She had supervised every painting, every relief. Here was the family receiving offerings. Over there my father holding a
fresh-killed duck in one hand, smiling in triumph, his greyhound at his side. Servants performing daily tasks and farming the land. We moved along the walls, a testament to our family’s early days. There were reliefs of the gods too. Thoth, my father’s god, and Anubis, finding the heart he weighed to be lighter than Ma’at’s feather.

But then came the inevitable, and we came to an awkward pause in front of my mother’s favorite painted relief. I could still remember her clapping in glee as she showed it to us for the first time. It looked exactly as I remembered.

There on the wall stood two young boys, brothers and best friends, drawing a bird trap shut, a pastime that had occupied much of our youth and brought us unending delight.

We stood apart now, Ahmose and I, separated by years and anger and misunderstandings and resentment, and we gazed upon that painting and remembered.

I reached out and ran my fingers over the reliefs, carved deep into the limestone. I turned to Ahmose, hoping for some sign of the affection he had once felt for me.

He did not take his eyes from the relief.

“I do not think I can remain silent any longer,” he said. “I have held my tongue these many years out of respect for Father. But now he is gone. The truth must be spoken, and confessions to priests are not enough.”

I held my breath, but he turned away.

“Speak then! Tell me!”

He turned back, his expression confused. “I will not speak to
you
of secrets too long held,” he said. “I will speak to the king. And I will let him deal with you as he sees fit.”

He departed our mother’s chapel, left me staring after him.

* * *

With a favorable wind and the current now aiding us, the return passage of the barque was swift. Yet the time stretched taut like a string threatening to snap, and I could induce Ahmose to speak no more.

We arrived back at the harbor the next morning, and Ahmose jumped from the boat, into the arms of his wife. He departed the harbor without a backward glance.

I was not greeted so warmly. Khons had seen the barque approach and was there glaring at me as I climbed out.

“He says you can come and split rock yourself if you want.”

“Who?”

“Ako, over at Tura. I sent him your message, and that was his word sent back to you. ‘Come and split rock yourself.’”

Hot blood surged in my veins. “I will see to the day’s work, then take a boat across and speak to him myself.”

“Good,” Khons grunted and turned on his heel.

I paused only a moment on the dock, with the water at my back and the pyramid before me. I raised my eyes and took a deep breath. Father was gone, but the work must go on. It was time to think of the future, not the past.

Ahmose’s cryptic warnings be cursed. I would leave my own legacy in stone, and I dared him to try to stop me.

* * *

I needed to see Neferet again.

I found her outside her home toward the end of the day, surrounded by children. She smiled at me over the tops of their heads.

I had not intended to stay for their evening meal, but she insisted. Sen arrived and only nodded in my direction. On the plateau he was congenial. In his home, he seemed wary of me.

He and I spoke of the project, as Neferet moved in and out with foods that delighted every one of the senses. Red beef and greens with pungent leeks. Juicy pomegranates, fleshy and sweet. Sen relaxed a bit, and I forgot my reason for coming and enjoyed the conversation and laughter around the table.

But when the meal had ended, Sen asked, “Did you come for a reason, Grand Vizier?” He glanced at Neferet. “Other than the pleasure of our company?”

I wiped my mouth and nodded. “I am trying to speak to anyone who had contact with the Great Wife in her last days, to learn whether there was any threat to herself or to Mentu-hotep. I was hoping to meet with some of your friends again, perhaps attend another of your gatherings.”

Sen seemed to mask a smile that implied there was something I was not saying. “We would be happy to have you again, my lord. We gather again a few nights from now.”

I chewed my lip. “I do not like to wait.”

“Is that so?”

Sen’s sarcasm was noted, and I smiled. “Perhaps there were a few with whom she spent her time. Would it be possible for me to call on them tonight?”

Sen deferred to Neferet.

“They seemed pleased to speak with the grand vizier the other night,” she said. “They would welcome him again.”

Neferet offered to guide me to the home of her friends, and soon thereafter we were in their courtyard, the woman Layla guiding me to the best chair and offering food and wine. And behind the kindness, I knew she also was offering me friendship. We sat in a close circle in their courtyard. A fire burned in the center, warding off the night chill and lighting faces with an orange warmth. In the corner, a young boy played a flute softly.

“We will help you in whatever we can, Grand Vizier,” the husband, Hanif, said. “But she did not share much of herself with us.” He smiled. “Especially at the beginning, when she believed we did not know who she was.”

“Did she ever speak of fear?”

Hanif looked to Neferet and she gave a slight nod. “She feared her own heart,” he said. “And the changes that were happening there.”

“Changes?”

“She wanted to cease her daily offerings to Egypt’s gods. She wanted to join us in our sacrifices, which are of a different sort and not in your temples.”

I looked around the fire, at the family’s glowing faces. “What kind of sacrifices?” I had heard of tribes in distant lands offering their children to the gods. Surely, these people—

“Do you bring offerings to the gods, Grand Vizier?” Hanif asked.

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“Because they demand it. Because I wish to appease them, to earn their favor and have them bestow blessings on me.”

“The One True God cannot be appeased, and his favor cannot be earned. He sits in judgment of all men who have gone their own way.”

I spread my hands on my knees. “Then you are to be pitied, for to fall under the wrath of any god is fearsome.”

Hanif seemed to grow bold. “There is only one God. Your gods are stone and wood, no different than the chair upon which you sit or the pyramid you build.”

I swallowed and fingered Merit’s ankh at my throat, suddenly unsure of the wisdom of speaking with these people. Did the gods care enough to listen to the words of those who did not believe in them?

“What use is there in worshiping a god who has only judgment for you and nothing more?”

Hanif patted Layla’s arm, whose face was alight with joy. “I did not say that he has only judgment. Besides, what kind of God would he be if we only worshiped him because we had a
use
for it? He is God. There is no other. He must be worshiped simply for that reason.”

I leaned back in the chair and studied his face, then Neferet’s. There was a different sort of peace there.

“So if not to appease or earn favor, why do you sacrifice?”

“To atone.”

I shrugged. “It is all the same.”

“But it is not!” Hanif leaned forward, his fingers pressed together. “His creatures have turned their backs on his holy face, and we can never appease his righteous anger nor do enough to earn his favor. His favor must be imparted to us, and it can only be imparted through the shedding of blood.”

A dung block in the fire popped, and the flame surged.

“When you die,” Hanif said, “you hope to have done enough good, to have kept yourself pure enough, to be found worthy to enter the afterlife. Am I correct?”

“I hope to, yes.”

“But what is ‘good enough’? What is ‘pure enough’? Either something is pure or it is not.” He smiled kindly. “Are you pure, Grand Vizier?”

I shifted in my chair. “If I am not, I do not see that the blood of an ox will make me so.”

“No, that is only temporary. But the One Who Comes will change that.”

I watched the boy with the flute. His fingers danced over the instrument.

“You said the Great Wife feared her own changing beliefs. Did she feel that her life would be in danger because of this?”

Layla spoke. “She was unhappy about Pharaoh’s declaration of himself as Ra on earth. She felt it was wrong, and it bothered her that he had been convinced of it by … those closest to him.” She looked at her hands. “She planned to speak to him about it. But I do not think she feared him.”

I stood. “Thank you for your thoughts, and your hospitality. It is time I left, however.”

Hanif stood with me. “Please come again to our gathering, if you like. We do not turn away anyone who sincerely looks for truth.”

I bowed. “Then the importance of truth is something we both agree upon.”

Layla squeezed my arm, as she had in their hidden chamber the day we met. I looked into her wide smile and wondered why this stranger seemed to care deeply about me.

Neferet led me out in silence. I accompanied her back to her home through the dark village and prepared to leave her at her door.

“Will you stay?” she asked.

“I cannot. I must leave early in the morning for Tura.”

“Tura!” Her eyes lit up. “May I come with you?”

I laughed. “Are you thinking of applying your paints to the white cliffs of the limestone quarry?”

She smiled and hit me playfully on the arm. “My brother is a stonemason in Tura. I have not seen him in many months. I would love to visit him, to take him some things!”

I frowned and looked into the night.

“Please, Hemi! I promise I will not cause any problems. I will be as silent as a sleeping cat.”

“You must be at the harbor at dawn. I cannot wait.”

“Agreed!” She stood on her toes and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Thank you!” she said and disappeared into her home.

It was not safe to wander home slowly through the desert, but I found my straying thoughts made it difficult for me to maintain a swift pace. The night had given me much to ponder, but I was certain not a bit of it would help me solve the murders of Merit and Mentu, nor help me to restore ma’at in the land I loved.

* * *

The harbor at dawn is like a sandstorm in the desert, with man and ship like grains of sand swirling in a frantic rush to get somewhere, anywhere. Supply ships, barges, and ferries clogged the dock, and shouted orders from pilots and crewmen pierced the morning air.

Neferet stood on the quay when I arrived, part of the chaos, in her dress with the red stitching and all those jingling bells sewn to the bottom. At her feet were overflowing baskets of bananas and tomatoes.

Her smile was as big as the blue sky. “I have never been here this early!” she said without greeting as I approached. “Isn’t it magnificent?”

I grunted. It seemed to me every craft in the greenish water was in danger of foundering unless someone took control of the disorder, and the baskets and crates of rations stacked on the quay may very well tumble into the water before reaching the village.

A crewman bumped me as he passed, sending me into Neferet. I could smell her perfume, even among the ripening bananas.

She laughed and threw her hands between us. “Grand Vizier!”

I stared at the laborer’s back, but he was oblivious.

“Our accommodations will not be luxurious, I’m afraid. The fastest way to get there is the next barge departing for the quarry.” I pointed to the black and yellow ship in the water, its prow towering over us.

Neferet grabbed a tomato from the basket beside her, tossed it into the air, and caught it with one hand. “I do not care. It is a glorious morning!” She scooped up a large pouch. “Shall we go?”