Lauren Haney: Face Turned Backward

She laid a hand on the child’s woolly head. “Amonaya will go. I’ve decided he’ll wear nothing but a white kilt and gold bracelets and anklets. His skin will be oiled to a fine sheen, and he’ll wave an ostrich feather fan over my head. I’ll be the envy of every woman there.” Her smile vanished in a pout. “I thought to take the lion, too, but he’s still too much the kitten.”

Bak released a long, secret sigh of relief. He had feared she would drag the beast along, and he would have to assign a Medjay to stay nearby and stave off the creature should it choose to maul some lofty nobleman.

Pulling free of the straps, she took Bak’s arm and ushered him out to the courtyard. A pale young woman with golden hair lay on a linen pad, unclothed in the sun. A slightly older woman, dark-haired and large-breasted, sat cross-legged beside her, rubbing oil into her back and buttocks. Both gave Bak sleepy-eyed smiles, inviting intimacy.

Ignoring them, Nofery plopped down on a stool in a strip of shade beside the wall. “You’ve not told me what Userhet thought worthy of dragging across the desert on his sledge, with you and Imsiba so close on his heels.”

“Nothing I’d risk my life for,” Bak grinned, drawing another stool into the shade.

She snorted. “You’ve thrown yourself at death more often than most-but always for principle, not for gain.”

“He had a bag of gold in kernel form. You know: the ragged pieces produced when molten gold is slowly poured into water.” Bak waited for her nod, continued, “He had bags filled with nuggets of hard-to-find metals such as iron and electrum, and chunks of precious stones. Nothing of any great size, all destined for a jewelry maker, I’d guess. He also had more than a dozen jars of aromatic gum resins. He must somewhere have had a special customer, for we’ve found more myrrh and frankincense than anything else.”

“The peoples to the north of Kemet, I’ve been told, burn incense in the temples of Baal and Astarte as our metalsmiths burn charcoal in their smelting furnaces.”

The dark-haired woman, prompted most likely by the mention of so many precious items, raised her arms and arched her back in a pretense of stretching. Not to be out-done, the pale woman rolled onto her side, the better to display her wares.

Bak gave the pair an absentminded smile. If Userhet had found a way to ship large quantities of resins down the river through Kemet and north beyond its borders, could he not as easily send elephant tusks?

Nofery tapped his knee with a finger, as if she feared his attention had wandered. “They say you searched the warehouses this morning and found several rooms filled to the ceiling with contraband.”

Bak laughed. “You must find a new source of information, old woman, one not so given to exaggeration. We found only one secret store and that not large, but I must admit it held many objects of value.”

“Tell me,” she urged, leaning close.

Pinching her cheek, he murmured, “Have I not already earned a jar of your finest wine, old woman?”

She jerked away, sniffed. “I thought you my friend, not one who comes only to drink and to make merry at my expense.”

“We found three coffins in the room,” he teased. “Two were man-shaped, the third…” Suddenly a light flared in his heart and he shot to his feet. “By the beard of Amon, Nofery!

If the thought I just had has any substance, I’ll be indebted to you for life.”

He dashed out of the courtyard, leaving the three women gaping.

“Where’s Imsiba?” Bak called, racing into the guardhouse.

After the bright street outside, he could see almost nothing in the dimly lit entry hall.

Knucklebones clattered on the hard earthen floor and one of the Medjays on duty scrambled to his feet. “He’s in the back with Hori, talking to a prisoner. Shall I summon him, sir?”

Bak strode into his office. “Bring both of them at once.”

The guard vanished through a rear door, and his mate followed Bak. “Is something wrong, sir?”

Bak stood next to the coffin, looking at it. He had sat on it so often he had begun to think fondly of the man within, as if Amonemopet were a distant uncle, one often spoken of but never met. “Were you, by chance, one of the men who carried this coffin from Ramose’s ship to this building?”

“No, sir. I was assigned that day to Psuro’s inspection team. We found the elephant tusk on Captain Mahu’s ship.”

“You summoned us, my friend?” Imsiba hurried into the room, followed by Hori and the Medjay who had gone after them.

Bak looked at the two guards, thinking to use them for what he intended, but decided not to. This he must do himself. He moved to the head of the coffin and pointed to the opposite end. “Take Amonemopet’s feet, Imsiba. Let’s carry him out to the entry hall.”

Imsiba gave him a puzzled look, but did as he was told.

Bak knelt so his hands were close to the floor and gripped the carved shoulders. Imsiba found a slightly better hold at the ankles. At Bak’s nod, they tried to lift the coffin. As neither had been able to get his fingers beneath the wooden box, neither had a good enough grasp to raise it off the floor.

“It’s too heavy,” Imsiba said, shaking his head. He turned to a guard. “Go bring a lever and some rollers.”

“And a chisel and mallet,” Bak called to the departing man.

Imsiba eyed him thoughtfully. “Do you know something, my friend, that I don’t?”

“Don’t you think Amonemopet weighs far more than he should?”

Imsiba stared first at Bak and then at the coffin, his expressions ranging from puzzlement to thoughtfulness to dawning realization. Certainty took hold and he began to chuckle.

Hori gave him a startled look. The remaining guard stared at the coffin, trying to understand the joke.

The guard who had left soon returned with tools. Suitably equipped, he and his mate raised the coffin onto the rollers, grunting at the effort, and moved it to the entry hall. While the container stood in solitary splendor in the center of the large, open room, Bak suggested he and Imsiba try once more to lift it. Better able to grasp it, they did so, but with an effort. Its weight, they both agreed, was too great for a man whose body had been dessicated.

With Imsiba by his side, and a wide-eyed Hori and guards too stunned to speak looking on, Bak took up the chisel and mallet. Vague indentations in the white-painted surface told him where to find the wooden pegs that had been hammered in place to secure tenons projecting from the edge of the lid into slots cut into the case. He knocked out the pegs and in-serted the chisel beneath the lid. A sharp rap with the mallet cracked the paint sealing the lid to the case. Hori caught his breath, shocked. The guards murmured hasty prayers. Bak pried up the lid.

No odor of decay or of aromatic oils wafted out. No man-shaped package wrapped for eternity filled the space. Instead, the coffin was stuffed with loosely packed bags that smelled strongly of grain, making Bak sneeze. Imsiba, Hori, and the guards laughed, releasing their tension.

Offering a silent prayer to the lord Amon that he would find what he sought, Bak lifted a bag and dropped it on the floor, raising a puff of dust. He picked up another and a third. In the space between two deeper bags, he glimpsed a smooth white surface. His heart soared.

He glanced up at Imsiba and grinned. “How many times have I sat on this coffin, wondering how a man could transport in secret anything as large as an uncut elephant tusk?”

“The gods at times have a perverse sense of humor.”

“They do indeed.” Bak picked up another bag of grain and looked down at the void he had created. “I shall miss Amonemopet. Though he never existed, he lived in my heart.”