Raw stone newly taken from the quarry, and roughly shaped blocks whose purpose was impossible to guess, shared the terrace with stone cubes to be made into square columns, drums to become sixteen-sided columns, rectangular slabs for lintels and jambs, architraves and roof slabs.
Scattered here and there, sometimes singly and sometimes in groups, were dozens of statues of Maatkare Hatshepsut in various stages of sculpting, from roughed-out blocks of stone to nearly complete sitting or standing figures or images of reclining human-headed lions. To the east, where the terrace fell away to merge into the landscape, the remains of an old mudbrick temple, neglected and crumbling, was gradually being consumed as the terrace was extended.
Scattered among the stones were the craftsmen who were shaping and polishing parts of columns and statuary, and the workmen who provided unskilled labor. The skilled artisans dwelt in villages outside the valley along the edge of the floodplain, while the other men lived in huts built in a shallow hollow between Djeser Djeseru and the ancient temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. These men had come from throughout the land of Kemet, men whose crops had been gathered, leaving them free to serve their sovereign. They had been pressed into duty to haul stones, dig ditches, build walls, whatever they had to do to pay off their debts or those of the noblemen on whose lands they lived, or to repay with labor offenses against the lady Maat.
To either side of the terrace, men toiled at the retaining walls, those to the north cutting away the slope, those to the south shaping and placing the stone blocks. A ragged line of youths carried dirt and debris by the basketful from the high side of the terrace to the low. Other boys walked among the men with donkeys, carrying skins of water. Well over a hundred men and boys whistling, laughing, calling out to each other, or talking among themselves. None afraid of malign spirits, at least in the light of day.
A nearly naked man, a workman if the dust and sweat covering his body told true, raced up the rubble ramp down which materials were moved from the terrace to the men building the southern retaining wall. He sped through the clutter of stones, drawing every eye, silencing the laughter and talk. Clearly agitated, he stopped among the columns below. “Pashed! Sir! I must speak with you, sir. Right away!”
The architect looked at the workman and at Amonked, his face a picture of indecision. Amonked was an important man, while the workman’s message might well be as urgent as he appeared to believe it was.
“Go to him,” Amonked said. “We’ll await you here.”
Pashed hurried away with the workman, both soon to vanish behind the southern retaining wall.
“Another accident?” Bak asked.
“I pray not.”
They strode to the southern end of the unfinished colonnade and tried to see where Pashed had gone. Thanks to the vagaries of construction, they could look down upon a new shrine to the lady Hathor and the four men laying foundation stones, but the incomplete segment of wall that would close off the end of the colonnade blocked their view of the area along the base of the retaining wall. They saw a dozen or so workmen standing about, looking toward the wall and talking among themselves, but Pashed was nowhere to be seen.
With Amonked unwilling to intrude unless summoned, Bak resigned himself to waiting.
Standing on the edge of the terrace, he looked across the workmen’s huts to the ruined memorial temple of Nebhepetre Montuhotep. It was as he remembered it, yet vastly different. The mound of rubble in the center was lower, the remaining columns had decreased in number and fewer were standing, none to their original height. Two men scrambled among the ruins, and even from a distance he could see they were searching for stone that could be recut and reused. A small crew of workmen levered the blocks the pair selected onto wooden rockers, which they used to raise the stones onto sledges. These were towed by another team of men from the old temple to the new.
Amonked pointed toward the center of the ruin. “You see the mound of stones that might once have been a pyramid-
or whatever it was? The three rows of fallen and broken columns that once formed a covered walkway around the mound? The wall enclosing those columns?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That, my young friend, is exactly the plan Senenmut started with. Same size, same shape, but set well forward of the older temple. Clearly his inspiration was not unique.”
Bak had the distinct impression that Amonked did not share his cousin’s affection for Senenmut.
“Was the building ever started?”
“Over a hundred men toiled here for several months.
When they went home to harvest their crops, he altered his plan. I’m not sure why. My cousin came out here, and perhaps she suggested something more worthy, more unique.”
“Sir!” The same workman who had come for Pashed stood among the columns below. “Pashed wishes you to come right away, sir. You and Lieutenant Bak. The matter is urgent, he said, most urgent.”
“Bata found a body in an ancient tomb.” Pashed flung a hasty look at a reed-thin workman who was shaking so badly another man had to hold a beer jar to his lips. The architect was standing in front of a rough hole in the sand that opened near the end of the incomplete retaining wall. He looked gray around the mouth, beleaguered. “A man struck down from behind.”
Bak knew no man long dead and buried would rouse such strong reactions. “The body is fresh?”
“So it looked to me.”
“Who is he?” Amonked demanded.
“I don’t know. I didn’t draw close. Nor did Bata, so he says.”
Bak thanked the lord Amon. With luck he might find some sign of the slayer. Or maybe he should thank the so-called malign spirit for holding back all who would otherwise have trampled over the scene.
“I’ll need a good, strong light,” he said, eyeing the dark opening.
The short, stout foreman responsible for building the wall, Seked by name, sent a workman off to get a fresh torch. The foreman’s grim expression and a tendency to rub the ugly scar running across his forehead betrayed his outward calm as a sham.
Bak glanced at the onlookers standing well back in a loose half circle: Bata’s fellow workmen, a dozen or more sweat-stained men, whose faces registered equal measures of excitement and alarm. Coming at a fast pace across the sand were the men he had seen removing stones from the ancient temple. Others were gathering along the top of the retaining wall. By end of day, every man at Djeser Djeseru would have told the tale over and over again, each time embellishing it. Bak took care to conceal his annoyance; if he was to resolve the problem of the malign spirit, he would need their goodwill.
He walked close to the hole into which he must go and looked into the black void. Located at the edge of the mound of dirt and debris that formed the terrace, it was directly in the path of the retaining wall. The sand around it was hard-packed. He guessed the tomb had been open for some time and the men had concluded they had nothing to fear from whatever was inside.
“Why did Bata enter the tomb?” he asked.
Seked stepped forward. “We needed to go on with the retaining wall, sir. We thought to fill the shaft today so we could build over it.”
“I gave them permission,” Pashed said. “The tomb was never completed or used, so we had no need to summon a priest to offer prayers.”
The foreman flung a bleak look at the dark opening. “I thought it best that we send a man down before we filled it. I feared some lazy workman might’ve slipped inside to take a nap.”
Bak nodded. He, too, would have wanted to be sure no man was trapped below. “Someone must go down with me,”
he said, giving Pashed a pointed look, “one who knows by sight most of the men who toil within this valley.”
Pashed nodded slowly, reluctantly.
The workman hurried back with a flaming torch. Bak took the light and strode to the tomb. No hesitation for him. No time to let grow within his heart the tiny grain of apprehension he felt. No time to give the onlookers the satisfaction of thinking he might share their superstitious fears.