Cynthia Bailey Pratt Page 4

  “Actually, she lived at least a thousand years before Christ.”

  “Wot’s that?”

  “According to Mr. Archer’s preliminary studies, of course. He might have to adjust the date when more information comes in.”

  “Ain’t it written on the h’outside? Looks like a patent medicine bottle with all them symbols on it. ‘None genuwine without this label,’ like they say.”

  “No one has had time as yet to translate every inch of those hieroglyphics, Mrs. Pierce. But you see this rectangular box here, just below the enfolding wings?” She pointed, her finger hesitating above the symbols. “We know that’s her name—An-ket—and that she was at least a sometime priestess of the goddess Hathor.”

  “Who was she, then?”

  “She protected maidens, helped women in childbed, and was the most popular goddess if the number of representations is anything to judge by. She’s there on An-ket’s breast. The woman with the head and horns of a cow.”

  “A cow? That’s a queer ‘un!”

  “To us, perhaps, used to a god who made us in his image, but the Egyptians had hawk-headed gods, and ibis-headed gods, and jackal-headed ... that’s Anubis, patron of embalming and the dead.”

  “I alus wondered why they ‘ad that big ol’ dog there....”

  Suddenly the char’s shoe-button eyes turned away from the antiquities and she said, “Hist! Quiet!”

  “What is it?” Julia asked, softly obedient. She thought of the watchman and looked toward the big opening in the wall. She hadn’t remembered about him and had been talking in her usual tone.

  “Somethin’s not right,” Mrs. Pierce said. “Didja ‘ear a funny noise just then?”

  “No. I couldn’t hear anything but my own voice.”

  “T’weren’t nothing, I guess. My nerves ‘ave been on the jump that bad lately.”

  “Have they? Why?”

  The older woman gave a wriggle that in France would have won plaudits as a thoroughly expressive shrug. “I h’ain’t been wot you might call ‘appy, since me oldest went off to get married. Seems like I can’t turn my ‘and to h’anything without it fretting me. Gettin’ old, I ‘spect.”

  “How long have you worked at the museum?”

  “Nigh on thirty years.”

  “But this wing has only been opened... oh, you worked in Montague House as well.”

  “Still do, miss. I goes there first. Coo, them books want a lot o’ dusting! Then I comes ‘ere to do—

  A sudden crash made them both look up. Above them, a head and shoulders stood out against the moonlight, framed in the opening of one of the small windows. The star-shaped grid that should have been there had vanished.

  A moment later, supple as a snake, the rest of the man’s body followed. Mrs. Pierce drew breath as if to scream. Something long and silver flashed in the intruder’s hand.

  “Sharrup! One little sound and the tart gets it!”

  Mrs. Pierce made only a strangled sound in her throat.

  A rope spiraled down, weighted on one end. A moment later, the man, thin and wiry, followed. “Don’t move a muscle, either of you, or you’ll get my shiny friend in the back!”

  “Can’t you see we’re obeying you?” Julia demanded. “There’s no need for further threats.”

  “Ooh, well, pahdon me, yer ‘ighness,” he said, dropping to all fours on the floor. He looked like a gaunt spider, dressed totally in black, from his close-fitting cap to his black socks. In an instant, however, he stood upright once more, his motions as lithe as an acrobat.

  He wore no shoes, only soft slippers. His pale face was thin and his smile good-humored, but the dark emptiness in his eyes chilled her. The glance he flicked over them stung with contempt. He obviously felt that he had them adequately cowed with his threats. Searching her spirit, Julia hated to learn that he had in fact done so.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

  “Never you mind. I’ll just takes what I wants and be on me way. You never seen me; I never seen you. You let me ‘ave ten minutes to make my escape and you can scream the place down wit’ my blessin’.”

  “Wot you want?” Mrs. Pierce asked. “Wot’s that?”

  “Just goin’ to prig these beauties....” He reversed his heavy steel knife to smash the glass case with the hilt. Julia saw that he had tied it around with a padded cloth, and the breakage made surprisingly little noise.

  A cold wind came sliding down through the broken window above them, bringing a metallic taste of ozone. Somewhere in the London night, thunder sounded. The thief knocked the jagged remains of the broken glass into the case.

  “No!” she said, and he looked over his shoulder at her in surprise. “You can’t steal those.”

  “An’ whose going ter stop me, I’d like to know.” He reached in to scoop up the heavy golden armlets. “Lovely workmanship,” he cooed. “Pity it’ll all be gorn by tomorrer.”

  “Gorn?” Julia echoed.

  “No good to me like this. Too well-know. Melt it down and the fence’ll give me the price....”

  “No!” Julia said again and walked resolutely forward. Lightning flashed, overpowering the lantern, followed by a rumble of thunder very close on its heels. The rain had not yet begun to fall from the faintly yellow clouds. “These things are worth a thousand times more in knowledge than in their base metal. Please ... you mustn’t...”

  He spun about and waved the knife before her eyes. “You shouldn’t never say ‘no’ to Billy the Wall. They’re alus sayin’ it, women. They got to learn, don’t they?”

  “She don’t mean it,” Mrs. Pierce said, in a quick, panicky tone. “She’s quality, she is.”

  “Quality, eh? Never had me no quality woman, ‘cept wunst when I was still a climbin’ boy. Crawled down ‘er chimbley, I did. Furst time I ever ‘ad me a woman in a proper bed. Seventeen, she was. Cried somefing fierce.” His lips turned up in a reminiscent smile that looked nothing like a human smile at all. It was as much as the sacred crocodiles of the Nile must have grinned just at feeding time. “Pity there h’ain’t no bed ‘ere. Still ...”

  Julia had been blinking at the horror before her in blank disbelief. From her childhood, she’d been the adored object of servants and her father. Thanks to her intellect alone, she’d not turned out to be a pampered brat, like Mrs. Pierce’s neighbor’s child. Early on, she had learned that she could only be happy if she gave love back as fully and as freely as she received it. Never had she come face-to-face with hatred; she saw it now on the face of the man before her.

  Slowly, he raised the knife so that the lamplight glittered all along the blade. “Do wot I says, or I’ll cut yer. Just a little bit at a time until you’re ‘appy to ‘ave me touch you.”

  Mrs. Pierce gasped, her voice a thread of sound, “Oh, no ... no.”

  Julia faced the knife and the hatred, asking herself what kind of scientist she would be if she gave in to his demands. His words crawled over her mind but she shook them away. If she lived life as she wanted to, she might face knives and hatred any number of times. Certainly far more often than some sedately married normal woman ever would. If she failed now, then she might as well give up her dreams for good and retreat into the life everyone said should be hers.

  The wind flapped the women’s skirts, tugged at the slightest looseness in the mummy wrappings, while livid lightning forked through the sky. For a moment, as Julia raised her head to look Billy the Wall in the eyes, the storm died.

  Julia faced the burglar and said, “No. I’m not going to permit you to do anything to me.”

  “Wot?”

  “And you’re not taking the antiquities, either. They belong to history.”

  She read only blank incomprehension on his rather grimy face. Then the sound of the word “no” must have penetrated. He snarled and raised the knife high, ready to bring it slashing down into the breast of the woman who defied him.

  Then lightning, ever seeking its counterpart, sizzled
and struck the upraised knife. The reek of burning flesh filled the air and she heard Mrs. Pierce’s scream. Just before she lost consciousness, Julia heard a voice say, “Behold! The Devourer of Souls shall have him!”

  And she knew, as the world rushed away through a black tunnel, that the speech was ancient Egyptian....

  Chapter Four

  Julia knew that she ought to be very, very dead. She recalled hearing a story of a shepherd, caught out in a fierce thundershower with his flock. Not only had the man been killed, but so had many of his sheep, lying in a circle around him, like a warrior surrounded by his slain enemies. The man who’d told her father the tale had said that he’d never forgotten the sight, for not one of the animals had been burned or scorched. They’d simply fallen in their tracks, whereas their shepherd had been horridly burned.

  Yet except for her ears, which still seemed to ring with the sound of that triumphant voice, she was unhurt. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help groaning a bit as she strove to stand up. Her skirt had skewed around her until she felt like a closed umbrella.

  A grayish greasy fog stung her eyes, but the fresh air through the broken window seemed to be dispelling it rapidly. The thunderstorm—if that is what it had been— no longer rumbled outside. Raising her head, she could see a few remote stars twinkling in the opening.

  Remembering Mrs. Pierce, Julia looked around for her. She found the charwoman lying flat on her back, one arm at her side, the other thrown across her bosom. Kneeling beside her, Julia reached for the other woman’s pulse. The relief she felt when the slow beat moved under her fingers was like a prayer.

  The older woman’s eyes opened. She seemed dazed. Julia smiled down on her and said with forced cheer, “Well! That doesn’t happen every day! Are you unhurt?”

  After a moment, Mrs. Pierce made a movement as though she’d like to get up. Julia helped raise her to her feet. Her cap was askew and she straightened it with an automatic push.

  Julia said, “I wonder what happened to Billy the Wall? I saw him ... I think I saw him being struck, though I can’t imagine why we are not dead if he was.”

  Mrs. Pierce pointed to the foot of An-Ket’s coffin. A black mark marred the white marble floor. Julia was reminded of Guy Fawkes Day. Just such outflung half-circles of sooty grime were left behind when the boys set off fireworks on the ground. But looking at this mark gave Julia something of a chill that could not be explained by the wind through the window.

  She felt instinctively that she looked at all that remained of Billy the Wall. Judging him on the evidence of his own words, it was probably no less than he deserved. Yet when had Justice ever overtaken an evildoer so swiftly? Julia was very grateful to whatever had annihilated Billy before he could carry out his threat, yet she felt unnerved by the speed of the service.

  “Behold,” she repeated softly, in English. “The Devourer of Souls has him. May God have mercy upon him.”

  She expected to hear “Coo, ‘o’s dial, then?” but Mrs. Pierce said nothing. This struck Julia as unusual. Mrs. Pierce had not seemed like someone to whom silence was a virtue.

  “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Julia asked. She had to touch Mrs. Pierce’s arm before her eyes, focused on something in the middle distance, turned to her.

  Mrs. Pierce spoke, in a deep yet female voice that was oddly attractive. The sounds were swift and liquid, like water coursing through a dusty land. Julia couldn’t understand a word, nor the suddenly graceful gestures of Mrs. Pierce’s reddened hands, though they certainly seemed to have meaning for the maker.

  When Julia raised her own hands in a gesture of incomprehension, Mrs. Pierce’s lips tightened. She stamped her foot with frustration, then bent to look down at her shoe. From her expression, Julia would have thought the charwoman had never seen a sturdy lace-up boot before. A moment later, she was plucking at her blouse, rubbing the backs of her hands, and tugging down a lock of hair as if to study its mousy color.

  Julia said, in some alarm, “Mrs. Pierce? Perhaps we should find you a doctor. I can’t imagine where that watchman has gotten to. I could send him for somebody.”

  Very slowly, as though she were speaking to a child, Mrs. Pierce enunciated some words. They caught in Julia’s mind the way furze bushes caught at her clothes on long walks. It was not Arabic, though the inflection was not dissimilar. Nor was it any of the other languages she knew, and yet it had a familiar ring. She looked from Mrs. Pierce to the bent triangle of the Rosetta Stone.

  In the few halting words of conversational Coptic that she knew, Julia said, “I salute you and wish you joy.”

  At first there was no reaction. Julia knew her accent was poor, for she’d only read the modern equivalent of ancient Egyptian; she’d never heard it spoken aloud. But then a brilliant smile broke out on Mrs. Pierce’s face, yet Julia knew somehow that she no longer looked upon the charwoman.

  “Joy to you, daughter of Osiris. Is this the West?”

  Julia did not know how to answer that. “The West” was where the Egyptians believed the spirits of the dead dwelt after their acceptance through trial into the afterlife. But how to explain that, while London was west of Egypt, there was little here to remind a woman of the Fields of the Sun where the dead enjoyed again the splendors of life?

  Before she could frame an answer given her limited vocabulary, Mrs. Pierce had turned to study the artifacts that surrounded them. Julia noticed that the woman’s bearing had undergone a change. The stooped shoulders and dragging gait of the work-burdened charwoman had fallen from her. She stood tall and straight, stepping out with a bold stride. Julia’s spine tingled, telling her the truth, even while her doubting mind wondered.

  “Mrs. Pierce” showed polite interest in everything, but when she reached the coffin of An-ket, her smile broke out again. She pointed to the coffin and then, unmistakably, to herself.

  “You ... you are An-ket,” Julia said in English.

  “An-ket-en-re,” she corrected.

  Translating mentally into picture-writing, Julia decided that it meant “Embraced by Re,” or “Beloved of the Sun.” She wished her own name was as pretty.

  The woman stood by her coffin, her head down as though in prayer. Julia respected that, though she found it hard to stand still. A thousand questions were leaping in her thoughts. If it could only be true ... But her native caution spoke as loudly as her excitement.

  Perhaps Mrs. Pierce’s brain had been turned by the lightning. Perhaps after thirty years of dusting artifacts, some of their history had rubbed off. Perhaps it wasn’t Mrs. Pierce’s brain that had turned, but her own. In all likelihood, she still lay unconscious on the floor and this was all some elaborate dream. Or her aunt was finally right and all her learning had indeed made her mad.

  An-ket caught sight of the statue of Anubis looming above her, his black coat blending with the gloom of the chamber. She made a peculiarly graceful gesture, her hand raised before her face. Julia was reminded of the Arab motion of greeting, hand to forehead, hand to lips, hand to breast, that had been described in so many of the travel journals she devoured.

  After a moment, An-ket crossed the room to stand before a statue of ibis-headed Thoth, which Julia had not taken notice of before. It was not a particularly large statue and no gold clung to its ebony surface. Again, “An-ket” stood in silent prayer before the statue.

  Then she turned and faced Julia. “I’ve asked the Lord of the Underworld and He Who Is Wise for their ‘elp, as promised in the Book of Life. They ‘ave given me the power of your tongue, strange though it tastes in my mouth.” The voice was part Mrs. Pierce’s uneducated English and part the unconscious grandeur of a high-born priestess.

  “I am grateful to them,” Julia answered.

  “You are not, I think, of The Land of the Field of Reeds?”

  “I’m a living person, my lady.” Somehow it seemed right, in this topsy-turvy dream, to call her that.

  “That is true, for why should the Great Cow save you if you were but a t
hing made to serve?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Again, An-ket pointed to the dirty spot on the floor. “The Great Cow Who Nourishes the Land with Her Milk destroyed that one who menaced you. Great is her name and her glory forever!”

  “I give thanks to Hathor and to you, her priestess,” Julia said politely.

  The priestess frowned. “You must be ‘igh indeed in the ranks of ‘er worshipers to use ‘er name so freely.”

  “Pardon my ignorance, my lady. I... I am new to the ways of the gods.”

  “An initiate? Ah, from the country, no doubt.”

  Apparently it was not proper for even a god’s servants to use their proper names in casual conversation. What a coup! So little was known about the life and customs of the ancient Egyptians that even so meager a scrap of information as this made Julia breathe faster.

  She tried to gain control over her galloping thoughts. What questions should she ask first? There were so many gaps to be filled in! What would Simon Archer ask, if he were here?

  The thought of Simon’s skepticism steadied her. He would have no hesitation in declaring this episode the dream of a madwoman. Surreptitiously, Julia pinched herself, quite hard. She did not awaken.

  Almost without her being aware of it, an idea took possession of her mind. If she went to Simon now, with Mrs. Pierce speaking in the voice of An-ket herself, what would he say? For a moment, she indulged in the fantasy of his excitement, his delight. But she knew perfectly well that he’d dismiss both An-ket and her at once, most likely without even hearing them. Hadn’t he an appointment tonight to disprove a spiritualist’s similar claim of bringing the voices of the dead to the living?

  While she strove to ask a question, An-ket stooped to pick up the lantern. “What is this? A torch without smoke?”

  “It’s a candle. It smokes, but very little. What do you use for light?”

  “Oil lamps. Why have you only one light in all this great temple?”

  “It is night. The museum ... the temple is closed.”