City of the Dead (3 page)

I had been here many times, just two nights ago when my friend and I had passed the evening in conversation and wine. I took the central passage through the house, until I reached the four-pillared hall where Mentu had entertained guests. Beyond this room lay the open courtyard with its shaded colonnade and squatty palm trees.

My entrance drew attention, and the wailing increased. I bowed my head to Hasina, Mentu’s wife, where she sat on the ground. My presence seemed to cause her fresh grief, as though the sight of her husband’s friend made his absence more bitter.

Mentu’s children huddled around their mother, some too young to understand their loss, some old enough to feel anger at the gods. A brazier burned hotly at the side of the courtyard, incense for gods who did not seem to care.

“Hasina,” I said. “I grieve with you in the loss of Mentu.”

She squinted at me from where she sat. She was a heavy woman, and her kohl-smeared cheeks quivered, her eyes accusing. “He cared nothing for his own life, only this pyramid you are building together!”

“He cared for you, Hasina. And the children—”

“Then why did he stay out, night after night? Nothing but work! It is not safe out there in the darkness. You should not have allowed—”

“Mentu made his own choices, Hasina.”

She shifted her ponderous weight and struggled to her feet. I took a step backward. The children cleared a path as she lurched toward me. “How could you let this happen, Hemiuni?” Her fists pounded my chest, yet I remained still under the blows, feeling they were justified. Her children pulled her away, but she dug
her fingers into my arm. “Who did this?” she cried. “Who took him from us?”

“I came to ask you the same, Hasina. Who had reason to harm Mentu? He was not a man to make enemies.”

“No.” Her sobs echoed against the courtyard walls. “No, everyone loved him. You loved him. He loved you.”

I smiled, a narrow-lipped smile that held my emotions in check.

“You should not have insisted he accompany you home, Hemi.”

“I did not even know he walked the desert. When I saw him last, he was safe here at home. We said good night, and I returned to the royal estate.”

She swiped at her eyes. “No, he came to me in my chamber and said that you requested he walk with you to your home.” Her voice sharpened. “You know he could never deny you anything.”

I frowned. “I went home alone, Hasina.”

“When I did not see him the next morning, I thought he had left early for the work site.” She broke out in a fresh round of wailing, and I pried her fingers from my arm.

“I will find answers, Hasina. I promise. Mentu will have justice.”

She dropped to the ground again, and her children formed a circle around her, a shield from the truth. But what was the truth? Why had Mentu lied to his wife, and where had he gone after I had left him two nights ago?

I escaped the house and ran to the central streets of the village, to the square where the leisure of old men and children fostered gossip.

As expected, the square teemed with people. There a group of white-haired men huddled around a game board of square blocks, tossing clay pieces and grunting at each other’s good fortune. I slid onto a stone bench beside one of them. Their game paused, and one toothless man squinted up at me, wordless. Nonchalance seemed absurd, but I knew better than to begin with questions.

“So whom do the gods favor today?”

A puckered man at the end of the bench wheezed out a laugh. “We will be favored when our bodies are renewed to live again.” He coughed. “Here, we merely spend our days waiting.”

I nodded as though I could sympathize and joined them in watching those who milled about the square. My presence drew glances from able men who should have been working, which led to furtive dodges into cross streets and alleys. These men could come up with a hundred excuses to be absent from the project, but the scribes kept careful attendance, and one could not escape their duties for long. Still, today there seemed to be an inordinate number of men at leisure.

“You have heard about Mentu?” I finally asked, still watching the square.

Grunts were returned to me.

“I seek justice, but I know of no enemies who would wish him dead.” I turned and eyed each of the men. “Do any of you know who would want to send him to the west?”

My question was met with shrugs and averted glances. The talkative one on the end leaned forward. His watery eyes wandered over me, and a spindly finger stirred the hot air before his eyes. “Leave justice—and questions—to the gods,” he said in a reedy voice. “There is nothing here that will bring good.”

I frowned. “What do you know?”

His shoulders hunched again, and he seemed to retreat.

A hand on my shoulder startled me. The supervisor of designs stood beside me. “Grand Vizier, there is a problem with the new design. Itennu is fuming that your drawings for the upper corridor are off by two seqeds, and the corbelling will be faulty. He asks that you come immediately.”

I growled. The old men were too slow to give up their secrets. “I will come soon,” I said to the supervisor. “Tell Itenna to push forward.”

The men had returned to their game of Senet while I was distracted. “A man discovers divine truth and order by asking questions,” I said. “Why do you tell me to stop?”

One looked up, but his eyes moved to something behind me. I turned to find Chuma, one of Khons’s supervisors.

“What is it now?” I stood and stared him down.

“The Aswan granite shipment, Grand Vizier.”

“Yes? What of it?”

“It has arrived.”

I exhaled loudly and closed my eyes. “What concern is that of mine? Can no one do his job without my holding his hand?”

Chuma cleared his throat. “Mentu-hotep usually receives the shipments and instructs the laborers as to where to place the granite.”

I tried to roll the tension from my shoulders and looked away. Another man of working age passed through the square, saw me and scurried for cover.

“Why are so many men about?”

Chuma followed my gaze. “The Victorious Gang and the Enduring Gang are not working.”

“What? Why?”

Chuma shrugged. “Without Mentu, the supervisors are waiting for instructions. The men have no assigned tasks.”

“This is madness! The incompetence and—” I clamped my jaw closed. At a time when we should be increasing our pace, the work had come to a standstill, unable to move forward without Mentu. A fresh pang of grief stabbed at me. I slapped Chuma’s shoulder to erase the sting of my accusation. “Tell the ship’s captain to begin unloading the granite at the harbor. I will be there immediately.”
And I’ll have a few things to say to the supervisors who decided to
declare a holiday.

Chuma half-smiled in understanding.

I turned back to the old men and gripped the edge of their table, with a nod to the red-and-white Senet board. “I have no time for games, as you can see. What do you know of Mentu?”

Most of them studied their hands or twirled game pieces in gnarled fingers. My friend on the end of the bench did not fail me.

“You ask questions that will bring harm, not good,” he said. “You must leave it alone.” His cloudy eyes turned upward to mine and they cleared, focusing on me with the intensity of the desert sun. “For the good of Egypt.”

I could have pushed him further, though I suspected I would get nothing more. But there was no time. I glanced over the village wall to the half-finished pyramid in the west. Plans must be revisited, granite shipments directed, lazy men put back to work.

The Horizon of Khufu must be my one and only focus. Without my complete attention, the project would falter.

Perhaps, as the old man said, I must leave questions of justice to the gods.

Surely Mentu would understand.

On the east side of the village lived a man of whom people spoke highly. Senosiris was the construction supervisor under Mentu, but he was about to be promoted. I needed to restore order without delay. I headed to the street where he lived, a rolled papyrus in my hand.

My workforce comprised about two-thirds conscripted labor and one-third specialists—artists, sculptors, and the like. The majority of men were farmers who came to the village for three months of the year while their land lay under water. At the end of
akhet
, the season of Inundation, they would return home to plough and sow. Depending on their rank, some had brought wives and children to the village. Others lived in barracks with dozens of other men.

The houses all looked the same here on the east side of the village—utilitarian mud-brick structures with flat roofs, in straight lines like rows of barley. I intended to ask the location of Senosiris’s house of a young man on the street ahead, but when he glanced my way, he darted into an alley and was gone. He was old enough to be a laborer, and I assumed he too was avoiding his work today.

I stopped a running child. “Do you know Senosiris, the construction supervisor?”

A smile like the sun broke over the boy’s face. “Ah, Sen-Sen!” He pointed down a narrow street. “The last house. There.”

I squeezed his shoulder in thanks and headed down the street. The red-painted lintel confirmed the home was the one I sought. Two large clay pots flanked the doorway, filled with water. A bright white linen hung at the window and billowed outward with the breeze.

A pungent smell greeted me at the door and led me inward. “Greetings,” I called. No doorkeeper or resident appeared. To the right, a passage led to the kitchen, and I followed the scent. A soft singing came from the room ahead, an unfamiliar melody, high and sweet. I approached in silence, not wanting the music to stop.

There stood a woman at a brazier, her back to me. She wore no wig that I could tell. Her dark hair hung straight down the back of her bright red dress. Yellow beads were stitched to the bottom hem. She swayed with her tune, and her hair swung in counterpoint.

I exhaled, and she started and turned.

“Oh!” She held a stir-stick, brown gravy dripping from it. She laughed and caught a drip with her hand, placed the stick in a pot on the brazier, then licked her palm and laughed again. “My apologies. I did not hear you.” She held out long fingers to the passage behind me. “Please, will you come to the courtyard?”

“Yes.” I preceded her down the hall. Behind me, the swish of her red dress embroidered with those fascinating yellow beads blended with the tinkle of the rings she wore on her wrists and ankles, forming its own kind of music.

“I am Hemiunu, Grand Vizier to Pharaoh Khufu, Wearer of the Double Crown.” To which she should have replied, “Life, Health, Strength!”

Instead she said, “Yes, I know who you are.”

And then we were in the central square of the house, a courtyard not much larger than my bedchamber, yet overflowing with twice the greenery of my courtyard. Terra-cotta pots held plants and shrubs, spilled out flowers, and ringed dwarf trees. A small decorative pool graced the center. She directed me to a stone bench and then floated away to the wall. I placed the papyrus on the floor.

“You are looking for my father?”

“For Senosiris, construction supervisor. This is his home?”

She bent to the floor to retrieve something, and I noticed for the first time the riot of color on the wall. She held a brush in her hand. “Yes. He is my father. He should be home for his noon meal at any moment.”

“What are you doing to that wall?”

She laughed. “I am painting it, of course. Do you only know tan quarry stones, Grand Vizier?”

“No, I also know pink Aswan granite.” A flush tickled my neck.

She turned and raised her eyebrows, as though surprised by my reply, and smiled. Her eyes were painted with a green that matched the plants around me, and she seemed a natural part of this place.

“I am Neferet,” she said, still smiling.

I cleared my throat. “Neferet. Good to meet you.”

She turned to the wall. “Would you like to watch me paint?”

“I need to speak to your father.”

She dipped her brush into a yellow the color of the sun. I watched as she slowly traced the tip of it across the wall— a feather-light stroke like the kiss of an afternoon breeze.

I flexed my fingers and my knuckles crackled. “How soon until your father arrives?”

She laughed and began her tune again, humming this time.

It does not matter. I could remain here all afternoon.

I shook off the strange thought, then occupied my mind with the tasks yet remaining to me today. I recited them, counting them off as my anxiety built. I shifted positions, drummed my fingers on the bench, cleared my throat. And still she painted. And hummed.

Not surprisingly, it was flowers she painted. On a base of white with a waist-high border of yellow, she painted a riot of lotus flowers, their pink petals bursting open around a yellow center.

“Why are you painting the wall?” I finally asked.

She flung a glance at me over her shoulder, her eyes hidden beneath long lashes. “Why not?”

“Because it produces nothing.” I rested an ankle on my knee and jiggled my foot.

She was silent for a moment, her brush outlining a fuchsia petal. “It produces beauty,” she said. “And beauty brings forth something from our souls.”

I shrugged. “I am a builder.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you are.” There seemed to be a note of sadness in her voice that I did not understand.

“There is beauty in more than flowers,” I said. “Even in stone.”

She paused, brush in the air, and studied me. “Tell me about your beauty in stone.”

I turned my eyes toward the north, as though I could see through the wall, all the way to my pyramid. “It took me an entire year to design it, chart it, choose the site, calculate the artists and laborers needed and the stones and supplies required.” I paused for a breath. “Then nearly three years to construct the harbor and canal and the housing, bakeries, and breweries for twenty thousand laborers.” I turned back to the girl, whose smile encouraged me to boast further. “And now, at last, we are building, creating a structure so precise, so perfect, the world will wonder at it.” I shrugged. “The intricacy of the design, the coordination of thousands of men working toward a single goal, the pyramid itself—is there not beauty in all of that?”

She bowed her head. “My father speaks often of your brilliance. I see you are passionate as well.”

A loud laugh echoed from the front of the house. Then, “Neferet!”

Neferet dropped her brush onto a palette and clapped her hands twice with the glee of a little girl. “My father is home. Come, join us for a meal.”

I bit back an indignant reply. Her invitation was somewhat inappropriate—a vizier did not typically take his meals with laborers.

Senosiris lumbered into the courtyard and I stood. The man’s eyes narrowed as he took me in, standing beside his daughter. “What’s this?”

Neferet glided forward and wrapped her arms around her father’s thick neck in a quick embrace which he returned. “You have a visitor. Shall I serve the meal here?”

Senosiris looked me up and down. “I do not think it is the grand vizier’s practice—”

“I would be honored to taste whatever it is I smelled when I entered,” I said and rubbed the back of my neck.

Senosiris held a palm out to Neferet and she smiled and drifted out of the courtyard, jewelry still clinking melodies and hair swinging. When she had disappeared into the passageway, I returned my gaze to her father. I found the older man watching me with an amused smile.

“I have news for you, Senosiris,” I began.

He gestured to the bench. “Call me Sen, please. I prefer to leave off the god’s name.”

Sen dropped beside me, crowding me on the stone bench. But his wide girth matched his wide smile, and I sensed immediately why he was revered.

“What news?” He sat forward slightly, his hands braced against his knees.

“By now you have heard of Mentu’s crossing to the west.”

Sen sighed and studied Neferet’s colorful wall. “He was a good man.”

“Yes. Well.” I swallowed hard. “His death leaves a gap in management that must be filled. I want you to take over as overseer of construction.”

“Me?” Sen bellowed out a laugh and slapped my back. My skin stung under the weight of his hand. “I’m not one of your circle, Vizier.”

“I know. But I believe you are the best man for the position.”

Neferet returned, hugging a clay pot to her chest and carrying small red bowls with the tips of her fingers. She lowered the pot to a nearby table and a garlic aroma wafted around us.

Sen said, “The grand vizier wants me to be overseer of construction, Neferet.”

She smiled and ladled steaming stew into our bowls. “Of course. Who else?”

Sen accepted the bowl she held out. “I am too old. It is for younger men to be ambitious, to advance.”

“I need your experience,” I said.

Neferet offered me a bowl and I felt her smile alight on me, as quick and ethereal as a butterfly. Her hair swung forward when she leaned toward me.

I dug into my food and found the meat flavored with a peppery sauce that watered my eyes.

Sen chewed and swallowed, then spoke. “I have enough to occupy my time, Hemiunu. My family, my community. I enjoy these simple pursuits. I am a simple man.”

I set my bowl on the table. “Exactly why I want to see you in this position, Sen. Your men love and respect you. You are one of them. They will work hard for you.”

“If that is true, then I lead by your example, Grand Vizier. You are also much revered.” Sen lowered his head, and it surprised me how his admiration warmed me. “You come to me before Mentu’s body has even grown cold,” he said. “You must be desperate.”

My emotions dwelt too near the surface today. I stood and moved to the center of the courtyard, where I stripped a frond of leaves from an acacia tree and rolled the leaves between my fingers. With my back to Sen, I let the choking feeling in my throat subside. “Mentu’s death grieves me greatly. I would not have you think me indifferent. But the project must not be allowed to falter. We must bear our grief privately, and the work must go on.”

Neferet appeared beside me, and she pried the crushed leaves from my hand, let them flutter to the ground, and wrapped her
fingers around my own. I stared down into her eyes and into the sympathy there.

“You were a good friend to him,” she whispered.

I did not know why the words of this strange woman would feel like a balm on my scalded soul.

“I will not leave the village,” Sen said behind us.

Neferet dropped my hand and I turned. My face felt warm.
Must be the pepper.

Sen ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “This is our home, and I won’t move up to your royal estate as though I belonged there.”

“Fine.” I brushed my hands together. “You may remain here among your men, as long as you attend necessary meetings at the palace.”

Sen stood, frowning. “I am not certain about any of this.”

I reached an arm forward. “Your humility only further convinces me that I have chosen well.” He wrapped meaty fingers around my forearm. “Senosiris, Overseer of Constructions,” I said.

“Sen. It’s just Sen.”

I reached for the papyrus I had brought. “I have a task for you already.” I unrolled the sheet. Sen looked on, his eyes roaming the drawing. “For the tools on the platform,” I said. “To keep them from falling.”

Sen lifted his eyes to me. “It is made of wood.”

“Yes. I think thirty to forty of them should be sufficient.”

“You would spend so much of our rarest resource for this purpose?”

“Wood is rare, it is true. But men are irreplaceable.”

Sen studied me a moment more, then took the papyrus. “I will see to it,” he said with a trace of emotion.

Father and daughter accompanied me to the door of their home, and I felt some weight of the past day lift. At least this part of Egypt’s ma’at, the structure of my management team, had been restored. The project would proceed, and all would be well.

The street had grown oddly still, and we looked both directions to find ourselves alone. And then around a corner came a crowd of mourners, led by a weeping Hasina and the body of Mentu stretched on a pallet. They bore him to the doctor’s workshop, where his seventy days would commence and his body be prepared for its journey west.

My satisfaction of a moment before evaporated in a mist of guilt and self-reproach. Mentu’s body was marching past me, and there was no divine order.

The pack of mourners pressed through the street like a rodent through the gullet of a snake. One person broke off from the attendant crowd and joined us.

My brother, Ahmose.

“It seemed an inopportune time for tax collecting,” he said by way of explanation. I introduced him to Sen and Neferet. Ahmose and Sen were an older and younger version of the same man. That they would like each other, I had no doubt. I did not fear that Ahmose might take an interest in Neferet, as he already had a beautiful wife and three adorable children at home.

And why should I care who takes notice of Neferet?

Ahmose regarded the procession. “I would not have guessed that he would be first.”

“First?” I angled my body away from him.

“Of the six of us,” Ahmose said, his eyes trained forward. “The first to cross.”

I knew of which he spoke. We had gone out, a royal hunting party of seven. We had returned only six.

I said nothing.

“Let us pray to the gods that Mentu will have justice,” Ahmose said. I felt his gaze turn to me, and I straightened my shoulders. “Better than she received.”

I tightened the linen I wore at my waist. “Sen, I would like you to be my guest at the king’s accession festival tomorrow night. We can speak then about your new duties.”

With a nod to Neferet and a glance at Ahmose, I fled in the opposite direction of Mentu’s procession.