The people living here, Bak felt sure, would get down on their knees and kiss Commandant Thuty’s feet when at last he announced his decision to allow the caravans to move.
A side lane carried him to the house where Captain Roy’s crew was sequestered. He stopped outside a makeshift door made of stout reeds lashed together to form a grid, allowing light to enter. Inside he heard:
“She’s a treasure to behold, I tell you, a creature so great of beauty she could be a goddess. Eyes deep and dark like the midnight sky, skin as pale and smooth as thick cream, lips as red as a pomegranate and as sweet. And what she could do with her mouth…” The speaker paused, gave a long, slow sigh. “Rapture. That’s what I felt. A love so deep and strong, so long-lasting, I thought never to regain my strength once she released me.”
Bak laughed softly to himself. The speaker was Dadu, one of the Medjays assigned to guard the sailors. The tale in its many variations was an oft told diversion in the barracks-imaginary, not real. A tale used to tantalize im-prisoned men, to make them hunger for freedom and the attractions they imagined awaited them outside, to draw the truth from them.
Bak called out, making his presence known. Dadu, a tall, wiry man with flecks of white in his hair, hurried to the door to admit the officer. Bak gave the Medjay a surreptitious wink, then took in the room with a glance. Skimpy sleeping pallets, folded for economy of space, stood in a stack against a wall. A brazier and a mound of pottery dishes had been shoved into a corner, while four large round-bottomed water jars leaned against another wall. Baked clay lamps, their wicks fresh and unburned, shared the prayer niche with the bust of some former resident’s long-forgotten ancestor. The second room, a windowless box, held another stack of sleeping pallets and a mound of bags, baskets, and jars filled with rations. Both rooms opened onto a walled courtyard containing a tall conical grain silo and a round oven. Particles of dust danced in the sunlight falling through the doors; the smell of manure was pervasive.
The dozen men who had been sitting or lying on the floor, 186 / Lauren Haney listening to Dadu’s tale with rapt attention, scrambled to their feet. Five others hurried in from the courtyard. Bak queried the Medjay with a glance. Dadu gave a slight nod; he believed the sailors had had about all they could take of seclusion.
Bak studied the faces before him, noting among them the sailor with the crooked nose and the boy, who had pleaded in vain to keep as a pet the small gray monkey. The men tried to stand stiff and defiant, but their eyes dropped to their feet or slewed to their fellows for aid or narrowed in a calcu-lating manner. He could smell their fear, a fear well founded, for they had been caught with objects that by rights belonged to their sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut. A fear he could use to his advantage.
At the courtyard door, he pivoted on the threshold and stood in the bright rectangle of sunlight, his face in shadow, his back warmed by the lord Re. “One man among you will speak for the rest. Who will it be?”
They looked at one another, confused by the need to choose.
Imsiba had judged them right, Bak saw, men accustomed to following, not thinking for themselves. No wonder their ship had run aground! “Must I decide for you?”
“Min,” someone said.
“He’ll do,” another said, pointing to the man with the crooked nose. “He talked to you before. Let him again.”
Bak remembered the man as surly, but one who could be made to speak. “Come forward,” he commanded. “Sit here where I can see you.” He pointed his baton at his own shadow, stretched across the floor.
Glaring at his fellow crewmen, Min shouldered his way to the spot Bak had indicated. He stood for a moment, rebellious, but a quick, hard look dropped him to his knees fast enough.
Bak spread his legs wide and held his baton at waist level, one hand at either end, filling the portal with authority. “Soon I must take you before the commandant, charged with transporting contraband in a greater quantity than ever I’ve seen before. Your captain is gone, swallowed by an angry river. The burden now rests on your shoulders alone.”
One man yelped like a startled puppy. The others babbled, their voices loud, defensive, resentful, whiny. Dadu, standing before the street door lest anyone try to leave, stared over their heads unmoved.
“In your favor,” Bak said, raising his voice, quieting them,
“is the fact that we’ve not only recovered the contraband, but your ship can be repaired and made a part of our sovereign’s fleet. With luck, you’ll suffer no greater punishment than the desert mines.”
Though he made the servitude sound like a stroll along the river, the prediction struck them dumb, filling the room with unease. Not one among them had failed to see the long lines of men, foul criminals sent south from Kemet, filing off the ships at Buhen and the other fortresses of Wawat and marching off into the desert. Many never returned. Those who came back were bowed and broken.
“I can ask the commandant to spare you-to shorten your stay in the desert or assign you to labor elsewhere.” Bak’s voice turned hard, cold. “You, in turn, must speak to me with a frank and open tongue.”
The men looked at one another. Fearful. Hopeful. Wanting to believe, not sure they could.
“I’d come back an old man!” The youth stared at Bak, shuddered. “What do you want to know?”
All eyes turned toward him; tight-lipped faces accused him of betrayal. But Bak spotted deeper, better-hidden emotions as welclass="underline" a relief that not one of them had been the first to break, and a spark of hope that the youth had opened the door to possible salvation.
“You told me a tale when last we met,” he said to Min.
“You spoke of sailing with Captain Roy to a lonely spot on the river and loading on board the illicit cargo we found on your ship.”
“The tale was true.” The sailor looked up, squinting into the sun, trying to see Bak’s shadowed face. “You saw for yourself signs of our effort.”
“Why did you load there when you usually take on cargo south of Kor?” Bak snapped out the question, risking the guess.
A man sucked in his breath, others muttered curses. A few, Min among them, stared open-mouthed and mute.
“The load was too big!” the youth cried. “Go on, Min. Tell him.”
“The boy tells the truth.” Min spoke grudgingly, nettled by the young sailor’s prodding. “We’d never before been so bold, never loaded so much illicit cargo, never carried so much at one time. But our captain…” He gave a soft, bitter laugh. “He said we’d be safe away from the frontier, where no one would know the truth from a lie, and with false pa-pers to carry us north.”
“In other words,” Bak said, steering his questions back to the path he wished to take, “the place south of Kor is small, with no space for so large a quantity of goods.” He paused to think, added another guess. “And it offers no convenient hiding place should you have to leave it for some reason.”
“That’s right,” Min mumbled, his expression sullen.
“And when there’s no moonlight, it’s as black as the inside of a sealed tomb,” the boy added. “If we’d loaded there, we’d still be stumbling around in the dark, not daring to light a torch for fear of being seen.”
Bak did not have to ask who might see. The river above Kor was dotted with islands rocky but verdant, and soil lay in protected pockets and coves along the water’s edge. Small villages and tiny farms clung to each bit of green, people eking out a living, aware and wary of strangers.
“Describe this place,” he said.
A few men whispered among themselves, someone muttered a curse. The boy opened his mouth to speak, but a hiss made him swallow the words.
Min stared straight ahead, refusing to look at his fellow seamen-or at Bak. “We moored against a rocky shelf near a small oasis on the west bank of the river. It’s above Kor, but the distance I can’t tell you. We always went in the dead of night with no moon to see by, and our captain never sailed a direct path.”