Bak smiled, sharing the jest, but quickly sobered. “Why did you feel so strongly about him?”
“He was critical of anything and everything. He’d strut into the sanctuary or one of the chapels, brush and pallet in hand.
He’d look around at the drawings, approach a figure already corrected and ready to carve-never one that needed altering, mind you-and he’d make some nonsensical change.”
“Always?” Bak walked into the antechamber of the chapel to the lord Re. He strolled around, looking at the lovely colored reliefs of Maatkare Hatshepsut making offerings, each image creating an ideal of royal piety. The colors were as vivid and bright as if touched by the sun. “These walls look perfect to me, blessed by the gods.”
The chief artist was too involved in his complaint to notice the compliment. “At first, I and my men were furious, which added zest to the stew, making Montu all the meaner.
He began to demand that the reliefs be changed, a far more harmful and difficult task than altering a drawing.” He ran a loving hand over a brightly painted, deftly carved image of the lord Amon. “This was one of the first, I recall. He insisted the face be identical to that of our sovereign, softened to look like a woman. I was furious and so was the man who’d carved it. You see what a marvelous job he did. What dolt would change that?”
Bak frowned, puzzled. “I don’t understand. You say Montu made ridiculous changes, yet this relief is nothing less than perfection.”
“Your praise is appreciated-and well-founded.” Heribsen’s sudden smile was like night turning to day. “This is the original figure, which he told us to alter and we failed to do.”
Bak eyed the little man with interest, the bright twinkling eyes, the laughter that threatened to bubble forth at any moment. “Explain yourself, Heribsen. Your good spirits tell me you won a battle Montu never realized he lost.”
“You’re a perceptive man, Lieutenant.” The chief artist rubbed his hands together in delight. “We knew Montu wouldn’t return for a couple of days, so we went on with the work as originally drawn, praying he’d forget, agreeing we’d all pay the price if he remembered.” A chuckle bubbled out.
“He did forget! He went instead to another relief, demanding changes there.”
“How often did this happen?” Bak asked, smiling.
“Regularly.” Heribsen had trouble containing his laughter.
“His stupidity became a joke the width and breadth of Djeser Djeseru. I’ve been told that the other craftsmen, all of whom he plagued as often as he did us, adapted the ploy to their own situations.”
“Your good humor does you credit, Heribsen. Pashed does not speak so lightly of Montu.”
The chief artist grew serious. “He bore the weight of Montu’s indolence and haughty attitude. He could not so easily shrug him off.”
“Amonked told me Montu was an accomplished architect, and Pashed agreed.”
“He was, yes, but he was not an artist.” Heribsen led him out of the antechamber, into the unfinished court. “He knew where a column should be placed to best advantage and he could tell us to place reliefs of offerings in a chamber where offerings were to be made, but he knew nothing of drawing the human face or figure.”
With the sun’s bright rays unable to reach the open court, the mirrors could throw no light inside the surrounding rooms. The artists who toiled within the sanctuary, the first chamber to be so deprived, were hurrying down the ramp to the terrace. Other men were filing out of the southern antechamber, preparing to leave.
Bak raised a hand to stop them. “I know how eager you must be to go to your village and your homes, but I’m sorely in need of help.”
The eight men bunched together outside the door, query-ing each other with looks that ranged from fear to curiosity.
“Yes, sir?” a tentative voice piped up from among them.
“We’ve never seen the malign spirit,” a tall, thin man said.
“Never,” said a grizzled old man, “and so we told your scribe and the Medjay.”
Heribsen glared. “Malign spirit! Bah!”
“I’ve another, different question,” Bak said, giving them a smile he hoped would reassure them. “One my men failed to ask.”
Heribsen’s glowering countenance brooked no refusal to comply. They nodded in reluctant accord.
“When did you last see the chief architect Montu?”
To a man, the men relaxed, preferring to speak of the dead rather than the unknown.
A short man with paint-stained fingers stepped forward.
“He came two days ago, sir, shortly before we lost the sun.
He went from one wall to another, examining the painting we’d done and the carving of reliefs. We thought he’d never finish.”
“When he finally left, we waited a few moments and then followed him down the ramp,” the older man said. “The last we saw of him was down there. .” He pointed vaguely to ward the end of the southern retaining wall. “. . near the white statue of our sovereign.”
“Did he seem happy? Angry? Expectant? He was apparently in no hurry. Did he seem to be awaiting someone?”
Again the men looked at each other, trying to decide. Bak suspected they had all been so eager to go home, they had noticed nothing but the passage of time.
“He criticized, as always, but not with his usual scathing tongue, and he demanded no changes.” The bald man who spoke glanced at his fellows, seeking agreement. Several nods drove him on. “We joked later, saying he must be looking forward to a night of pleasure.”
Well satisfied, Bak thanked them with a smile and sent them on their way. He had narrowed the time of death considerably. Montu had been slain sometime in the evening or, more likely, early in the night, a time when the malign spirit was said to appear.
Following the men down the ramp, he said, “Tell me of the malign spirit, Heribsen.”
“I’ve never seen it, nor do I expect to.”
“You don’t believe it exists?”
“I don’t.”
“What of the many deaths and injuries at Djeser Djeseru?
Do you believe them accidents and nothing more?”
A long silence carried them to the base of the ramp. The chief artist stopped and offered a smile, but it was off center, lacking his usual good humor. “How can I speak of accidents when thus far my crew has remained untouched?”
“A scaffold fell, I’ve been told, and a man injured.”
“It fell within the sanctuary while we were painting an upper wall. A binding had come loose, a knot that didn’t hold. We inspect them more carefully these days.”
“Did the malign spirit make the scaffold unsafe? Or was it done at the hands of a man?”
Heribsen looked pained. “Would a man come up here in the dead of night to loosen a binding when all who toil here know a malign spirit inhabits this valley?”
“But you don’t believe in a malign spirit.”
“I don’t. Nor would I risk my life to come in the dark to do damage to a scaffold.”
Bak gave up. Heribsen did not believe, but he feared. The contradiction confounded him.
“They say the tomb contains a treasure.” Useramon, the chief sculptor responsible for the army of statues that would one day adorn Djeser Djeseru, stared toward Imen across the many blocks of stone lying on the terrace. The guard stood alone; the priest had not arrived. “Is that true?”
Bak had known the news would spread, but it irritated him nonetheless. “The sepulcher is small,” he said, avoiding an outright lie, “and contains a few wooden models and some pottery as well as the wrapped body.”
“From what I heard. .”
“I’m here to speak of Montu, Useramon.”
The large, heavily muscled sculptor nodded, unperturbed by the implied reproach. “Heribsen and I spent many an hour complaining about him, I can tell you.” He sprinkled a soft piece of leather with water and dabbed it in a bowl of silica powder, collecting a thin layer of the shiny abrasive.