Lauren Haney: Face Turned Backward

He led Bak into the house and up a broken stairway to the roof. Bees flew over and around them, leaving the hives and returning, intent on a last delivery of pollen before dark.

They walked gingerly to the edge of the undamaged portion of roof and looked down into a small square room, probably long abandoned, that had newly been converted to a windowless, doorless storeroom. Dozens of copper ingots the thickness of a finger and shaped like the skins of some dead animal were stacked against the walls. The bundled hides were not among them.

“Where’ve you hidden the rest?” Bak demanded.

The old man’s eyes leveled on Bak’s, his voice rang with sincerity. “This is all we found.”

The time had come, Bak decided, to point out a simple truth. “I’ve two choices, Pahuro. One is the pledge I gave you before. The second is not so pleasant.” He walked to the edge of the roof and looked across the village toward the oasis, its lush green palms and fertile black soil soon to A FACE TURNED BACKWARD / 49 emerge from the floodwaters. “I can take every man over the age of fourteen to Buhen, and there they’ll stand before the commandant as thieves. If he judges them guilty-and he will-they’ll join a prison gang and be sent into the desert to work the mines for our sovereign, Maatkare Hatshepsut.

Fitting punishment, don’t you think, for men who’ve taken what by rights belongs to her?”

Pahuro stood stiff and pale, jarred by the threat. With all the able-bodied men torn from the oasis, only women and children would be left to plant the fields and tend the crops, a close to impossible task. Even worse, many of the men might never return from so harsh a punishment.

“You will close your eyes to our offense?” The question was not a plea, but it came close.

“I vowed I would, and I will.”

“Come with me.”

“This is all we found on board, each and every item.”

Pahuro looked like a man newly widowed, so great was his sorrow at losing so much of value.

Bak, standing beside him, tried not to show how surprised he was, how astonished. He had thought to see hides, a sail, a few other mundane items-nothing like what he saw before him, a veritable storehouse of precious objects.

The old man had led him to the head of the fertile valley and up a steep path to a deep indentation in the cliff face that had been enclosed by a ring of boulders. Cages lined the back wall, protected from the sun and wind by an overhanging shelf of rock. They held two lion cubs and a pair of smaller cats whose name Bak did not know, four wild dogs-puppies actually-and several monkeys, including two young baboons, sacred animals destined for a god’s mansion in Kemet. If not for the bundles of reddish, dun-colored, and black-and-white hides stacked against the boulders, he might have thought the cargo from a different ship than the one he had seen in Buhen.

A high-pitched chirp drew his eyes to the wall beyond the cages, where a small gray monkey peered out from the shoul-50 / Lauren Haney der of an oarsman thirteen or so years of age, no doubt the one who had left the imprint in the sand. The boy’s older companion, a heavy-muscled sailor with a crooked nose, hugged his knees close and glared at Pahuro. Painted figures of cattle and men marched across the wall above their heads, and above the cages as well. Farther back, additional blue-black and red drawings decorated the wall behind stacks of wild animal skins-leopard, zebra, and giraffe-baskets of ostrich eggs and feathers, and jars and baskets and chests whose labels identified their contents as aromatic oils, spices, and incense.

So much of value, so many beautiful and rare objects, each and every one, Bak was convinced, an item of contraband.

He held out his hand, palm up. It was sweaty, but at least it did not shake, betraying his excitement. “I’ll need the ship’s manifest.”

Ignoring the sailor with the crooked nose, whose face was aflush with anger and blame, Pahuro walked the length of the shelter and brought back a gray baked clay jar containing a half-dozen rolls of papyrus. “No one in my village can read nor can the sailors who came to us after the wreck, but the scroll you want must be here.”

Bak glanced at notes scrawled on the outside of the documents. He found not one sealed manifest, as he should have, but two. The first was short and concise, listing cowhides, ebony logs, and the coffin of a man named Amenemopet taken aboard at Kor and copper ingots loaded at Buhen. It was written in the familiar, cramped hand of a senior scribe Bak knew well. The second was longer, recording the exotic objects in the shelter in addition to the more ordinary items.

It was a false manifest, intended to convince any curious inspector that the entire cargo was legitimate. The writing was neat with perfectly formed symbols, as if prepared by a scribe intent on omitting all slovenly habits that might some time in the future point to him as the author.

Bak walked the length of the shelter, comparing the list with the items he saw. Without an exact count, he could not be sure, but he thought he found everything. Numbers of individual objects could be compared with the document later when they were loaded on Ramose’s ship for transport to Buhen.

Scrolls in hand, his excitement tamped down to a manage-able level, he stood before the sailors. “Where’s Captain Roy?”

“Gone,” the older sailor growled. “Washed overboard.”

Bak glanced at the youth for confirmation.

“It’s true!” The monkey grabbed the boy around the neck, startled by the tension in his voice. “The storm struck sooner than Captain Roy expected. We were still securing the cargo, trying to tie down the logs. The air was so thick we couldn’t see our feet beneath us. The captain knew these waters as I know the freckles on my hands, so he stood on the bow, searching for safe harbor. A great wave struck us, and he was gone. And so was Woserhet and Maya, though we didn’t miss them until later.”

The tale had a ring of truth, but…“How did you find the wadi where your ship lies now?”

“The gods took pity on us! We were blown into its mouth!”

The boy looked awed by the memory. “We didn’t know where we were. If we had, we might’ve saved the vessel.”

“We thought we were on the open water,” his companion growled.

The boy nodded. “Not until we ran aground did we realize our error.”

The older sailor sneered. “If the captain had been with us, he’d have known.”

Bak could well imagine the chaos that must have reigned with no man to give orders and no one knowing what to do.

“Where’d you load this precious cargo?”

“At Kor,” the man said before the boy could answer.

Bak gave him a withering glance. “I know exactly what you loaded at Kor: hides, ebony, and the coffin. You loaded the copper at Buhen three days ago, and later that same afternoon you sailed north.”

The youth, eyes wide and afraid, opened his mouth to 52 / Lauren Haney speak. His companion clamped a hand tight around his thigh, digging his fingers deep, drawing a cry from the boy that sent the monkey cowering into his arms.

“My Medjay sergeant is even now searching out your fellow sailors. He’ll find them, you can be sure.” Tapping the man’s knee with a scroll, Bak made his voice ominous. “Will you tell me what I wish to know, or will you stand back and let another man speak? Will you be given favorable treatment because you helped me, or will one of your fellows walk away from Buhen, freed of all guilt, while you go with the others to the desert mines?”

The man glanced at the boy, whose eyes pleaded for openness and honesty. He spat off to the side, as if obliged to show his contempt, and began to speak, his mien surly, his tone grudging. “We stopped that night about halfway between here and Buhen. On the west bank of the river. A lonely spot of desert too barren and dry for any man to live.