Other than the wood, the cargo had been commonplace.
Much of the deck had been stacked with bundled cowhides, he remembered, and an unending line of men had been carrying copper ingots from a warehouse to the ship, stowing them in the hold. Now all that remained above was the coffin, the logs, and whatever the baskets contained. Something too heavy to move easily, he guessed, or not worth the trouble.
“Has anything been left below?” he asked.
“Not even the sail.” Ramose climbed the slope to stand beside him. Feet spread wide, thumbs hooked to his belt on either side of his ample belly, he stared at his own ship. Imsiba was still on deck, probing baskets and chests and bundles, chatting, laughing, making light of his task. The Medjay’s smile, his good humor, and most of all his thoroughness had never failed to scare the truth from men with something to hide.
Ramose, seething with anger, tore his gaze from his ship to look at the wreck. “When last I saw this vessel, the men were unloading a cargo of grain at Kor. Captain Roy said he meant to stop next at Buhen for a load of copper bound for Abu. I knew the man, but not well, so I didn’t tarry to chat.”
Bak was loath to praise men who took what belonged to others, offending the lady Maat, but he had to give the thieves their due. Copper ingots were heavy and cumbersome and so were bundled hides. They must have toiled like ants to clean out the boat, clear most of the deck, and hide all they took. Given another day, they would have hauled away the logs and might even have broken up the ship for firewood.
The body, he assumed, would have been thrown overboard, the coffin saved for later use.
Ramose’s eyes darted to his own ship and back to the wreck; his voice turned intense, bitter. “We found this ship as you see it, Lieutenant. May the lord Hapi swallow us all if I’m lying!”
Few men of the river would dare such a plea. Any who sought the river god’s vengeance in such a manner was either honest to a fault or so guilty he knew for a fact that he had earned a watery death.
Bak laid a hand on the captain’s shoulder and smiled.
“You must bear with me, Ramose. I have to be sure of your innocence. If I’m to retrieve this vessel’s cargo, I’ll need your help and that of your men.”
Ramose barked out a laugh. “I don’t believe it! At the same time you insult me by questioning my honesty, you ask for aid.” He shook his head in mock disbelief, laughed again. “I doubt I’ve ever met a man so suited to his task. The lady Maat must think you a perfect tool.”
Bak was not sure if the comment was meant as a compliment or a condemnation. He wanted to believe the former, for Maat was the goddess of truth and order, but the word
“tool” bothered him.
To avoid further discussion, maybe heated words, Bak walked along the shore, where a few scraggly reeds reached up through the water. A dozen paces took him to the track that snaked up the steep incline to the top of the escarpment.
The surface of the path was sand and rock, hard-packed by the passage of feet and cloven hooves, impossible to read.
But men in a hurry often took shortcuts, and men heavily burdened sometimes stumbled to left or right.
He climbed to the first bend, where the trail doubled back, and stopped to study the slopes to either side. They were rough and rocky, at first as uncommunicative as the path, but soon he found a tiny pocket of sand deposited by the recent storm, and on it the perfect image of a bare foot, as yet untouched by wind. The print was that of an adult, too large to be a woman, unscarred, ordinary. Maybe that of a sailor, maybe not. Offering a quick prayer to the lord Amon that
44 / Lauren Haney patience would reward him with a more revealing clue, he walked on, taking a step or two at a time, stopping, searching for further sandy patches.
The trail again turned back on itself, climbed higher. He spotted another, larger pocket of sand sheltered by an out-cropping rock four or five paces above the path. He thought he glimpsed some form of imprint. Practically holding his breath, he bounded up the slope. His foot slipped on an unstable bit of rock and he fell, skinning a knee. Indifferent to the blood oozing from the wound, to his burning flesh, he knelt to examine the impression left in the sand.
The image was distinct, easily read. His spirits soared. To the left was a smooth square amid a network of triangles, the imprint of the net-like garment worn by oarsmen, with a leather patch at the rear to protect the kilt. The tiny hand-prints of a monkey, a few smudged as if the creature had grown restless, marked the sand to the right. A monkey? Bak wondered. He could in no way imagine so exotic a creature living in a poor village along this portion of the river. And neither Roy’s ship nor Ramose’s had carried wild animals as part of the cargo. Perhaps the monkey was a pet. A sailor might somehow have laid hands on the animal and kept it as his own. Not a member of Ramose’s crew, for no monkey had been found when his ship was inspected in Buhen.
No, the man who sat here had been among the crew of the wrecked ship. He and the others who had survived the storm had made their way south to the village, where they had recruited men to help salvage the cargo. But what of Captain Roy? Why would a man strip his own vessel of all it carried?
A movement drew his eye toward the wadi mouth. Imsiba stood at the rail of Ramose’s ship, waving both arms over his head, his signal that the captain and his crew were free of guilt. Bak plunged down the trail and hurried to the man he had wronged. An apology was in order.
“Until you came, we knew nothing about a shipwreck.”
Pahuro, the headman of the village upriver from the wreck, shook his shaggy white head in absolute denial. “Since we didn’t know about it, we can’t have taken the cargo.”
The logic was impeccable, Bak thought, and a blatant lie.
Leaning back against the hip-high mudbrick wall that surrounded a paddock containing two plump white cows and a gray donkey, he looked up at the trail where it vanished from sight at the top of the escarpment. No sign of Imsiba, who had gone in search of a youth he had spotted on the clifftop, keeping an eye on the wreck. A villager, maybe, or one of the truant sailors.
Inside the paddock, flies buzzed around several greenish piles of manure whose smell blended with the odor of the animals and the tangy scent of hay. A tame crow hopped along the wall, its hoarse cry a demand for food or attention.
From where Bak sat, the village looked much as it had from the river: a few poor houses reached by narrow, dusty lanes giving access to doorways leading into dark, airless rooms.
Three small, naked children, one with his thumb in his mouth, peered down from a rooftop.
Now and again, Bak glimpsed Ramose’s sailors going from house to house, Tjanuny at their head, looking for missing items. He had made the oarsman their leader as soon as he had returned the skiff with appropriate apologies and sufficient groveling. The villagers stayed out of their way, watching their progress from a distance, whispering. They seemed furtive rather than resentful; people with a secret, not the indignant victims of an unjust search.
“Your village is neat and clean, Pahuro, your fields well tended.” Bak nodded toward the oasis spread out below.
“Your date palms must be the envy of every man and woman along this stretch of river. Can you honestly say you didn’t have the good sense, the moment the storm died down, to send children out in search of any useful and desirable items that might’ve blown ashore?”
Pahuro, looking smug at the compliment and torn by the conclusion, readjusted his position on the one chair the village possessed. It was a stiff wooden armchair, its seat covered by a pillow with a complicated pattern of interlocking 46 / Lauren Haney multicolored spirals worked onto its upper surface. Before the old man had settled himself upon it, Bak had noticed how thin the pillow was, perhaps to display the design to its best advantage. Whatever the reason for so skimpy a stuffing, it was too thin to protect the bony rear of the tall, skinny headman. Bak suspected patience would reward him with the truth simply because Pahuro would sooner or later become desperate to stand up. However, he had no desire to wait so long.