Max had visited the Reading Room almost every day for more than a month, trawling through ancestral volumes for clues.
Surely, someone had written about Room X and the secret passage of the pyramid of Cheops.
He knew, of course, that the archives had been meticulously combed many times before by minds more eminent than his. But he also knew that researchers could be idle and often used the same sources. So Max had left the beaten path, looking instead at not so well-thumbed volumes, journals and papers from the travelers of the Grand Tour from centuries back. Many of these texts were newly indexed, newly translated and freshly digitized. He searched the documents for any entry, suggestion, or rumor; anything that might explain what, up to then, had seemed inexplicable.
Of course, he had been told his search was futile. But Max did not give up easily.
An early find suggested his determination might not be for nothing. History books had always held that the man who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922, Howard Carter, was a good archeologist; that he had waited to enter the grave until he had the most appropriate tools and the best experts available to carry out a systematic analysis and keep the most accurate records possible. But according to little-known archives from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that all this was pure fiction.
Far from exhibiting a scholar’s patience, Carter had succumbed to temptation as much as any greedy treasure hunter. Even worse, several testimonies buried in long-forgotten newspaper reports revealed that Carter had literally covered up his initial visits by placing wicker baskets in front of the opening he used to reach the tomb. If his methods could fell the accepted history of a giant like Carter, Max was convinced that all he had to do was continue to look and listen, and all the voices of the past that had not been heard would soon share their secrets.
After a month of research however, it became clear that if the voices of the past knew anything of the passage leading to Room X, they were reluctant to speak.
Time passed quickly beneath the domed ceiling, but as he grew tired, the pain in his leg became sharper. It was time to go home. He could almost forget the pain when he was engrossed in his search. The casts on his right leg and arm would soon be removed, and then he would be able to walk with crutches. But his left leg, which was broken in several places, would never be completely healed. He knew he would limp for the rest of his life.
But at least he was still here to tell the tale.
Unlike Moswen.
Max swallowed hard, trying to tear the gruesome images from his mind. Finally, he glanced up as the last of the researchers were putting away their books and heading for the exit. The curator helped him put his belongings in his backpack and escorted him out. In the Great Court, the bright sunshine of the early afternoon had been reduced to a dark, copper glow. But Max didn’t notice the light.
He noticed a figure standing in the long shadows, at the entrance of the Egyptian antiquities halls.
She was tall, very thin, with a strangely familiar profile. Her green eyes seemed to radiate an intense energy that belied the pallor of her skin or the gray of her hair. It took him a moment to realize that she was looking directly at him.
As he felt her gaze, he couldn’t escape the sensation of lightness and sadness combined, stretching a single moment into an eternity. As she approached, he did not move. Her steps were certain and deliberate, and a voice in his mind begged to turn and get away, confident that once she reached him, his life would be irrevocably altered.
But Max either did not, or could not, listen to that inner voice. Suddenly, his sense of foreboding gave way to a feeling like receiving long-awaited good news, or finding something precious and unexpected.
It was the girl. The girl in the pyramid.
30
“Max Hausmann?” Her voice was hoarse and beautiful like a wave caught on a rocky shore.
“Yes?” Max waited.
“I'm–”
“Jessica Pryce,” Max whispered with a weak smile.
Her brow furrowed slightly. “Call me Sixtine.”
“Sixtine,” Max repeated. “Nice to meet you.”
For a few long seconds, they stared wordlessly at one another. Silence seemed the only way to acknowledge the depth and enormity of what they had both experienced, a bond that left no room for the futility of polite conversation. Then Sixtine smiled, and Max felt a space opening up in the place where he was sure his heart had always been.
An announcement broke the silence between them: the museum was closing, and guards were politely hurrying the crowds of visitors out into the London night. But instead, as if immune from the limits of such petty rules, Sixtine turned and made towards the room of the great Egyptian statues. The noise of the visitors in the hall faded little by little, and yet no guard came to chase them out. Sixtine walked with the same measured deliberateness between the sculptures, without haste or anxiety. Max followed her, the wheels of his wheelchair gliding silently over the polished marble.
“Are you going back to Cairo?” she finally asked, her words rebounding off the surfaces of the deserted gallery.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Max did not answer. He did not want to say he was scared. Every time he thought back to Cairo, his mind conjured up images of blood and anger, of bones broken at impossible angles. His memories cast Sixtine in a pall of black and white and orange, and the scent of sulfur and human carrion suddenly filled his nostrils.
“Then why do you spend so much time researching the pyramid?” she asked.
Max was surprised that she knew. Instinctively he felt he needed to lie, but he didn’t quite know why. “I have a diploma to finish.”
A guard approached from out of the gloom. It was past closing time. Max’s stomach tightened. The thought that his encounter with Sixtine would come to an end before it had even began seemed unbearable.
“Miss, do not hesitate to come and see me if you need anything,” the guard said softly through the half-light.
“Thank you,” Sixtine whispered.
The guard seemed every bit as smitten as Max.
Once alone, they moved deeper into the galleries and further away from the open space of the Great Court. The only lights that remained on were those that illuminated the display cases and exhibits, resulting in dramatic shadows being thrown up the walls and across the floor.
Suddenly, one of the lights went out.
Max noticed Sixtine stiffening, her emerald eyes moving with an almost feral speed to the place where the light had been. But finding nothing sinister, she relaxed a little and asked, “I heard that you saw Moswen just before he died?”
“Yes,” Max replied, flinching at the memory of the tortured figure trapped behind the door.
“Do you think he killed me?”
Her question should have been shocking. But, surrounded by sarcophagi and sculpture dedicated to a world beyond that of the living, Max did not flinch. He had seen her come back from being buried in the greatest tomb in the world. Life and death seemed so very close.
“I've been thinking about it ever since I came back,” Max said.
“Could you have saved him?” Sixtine asked bluntly.
Max hesitated. “I tried, but in the end, I guess self-preservation took over.”
“And when you were trying to save him, what did you think?”
“I was convinced he was guilty. But then after...”
“After?”
“After leaving him behind, after jumping out the window, after the hospital, after Egypt,” Max sighed. “Now I can’t lie to myself. He may have been guilty of many things, but I don’t think he was guilty of killing you… I mean your husband.”
Max felt the warm intensity of Sixtine's gaze upon him. He didn’t want the sensation to end, so he continued. “I believed him guilty because, like everyone else, it helped ease my conscience, and made things easier. It made sense of the senseless, you know?”
He broke her gaze, stare
d at the palm of his hands. “I could have tried a few seconds more… maybe it would have saved his life. Anyway. There is nothing I can do about it now.”
“Yet you are still trying,” she said softly. Max shot an anxious glance toward Sixtine. “And now you spend your nights and your days looking for something else that makes sense.”
Max said nothing. He looked down again, as if searching for an answer written in fresh scars etched on his hands.
“Me too.” Her voice was so low that it was almost a whisper.
Those two words exploded in Max’s chest. A connection between them. A precious connection.
“I don’t think Moswen is responsible,” she continued, more confident. “I read newspapers, I see a story, my story, but told by others. I was someone, I wake up as someone else, and I am forced to accept this version. It’s my story, and yet it doesn’t belong to me. How does that even make sense?”
“Don’t you remember anything? The murder? The pyramid?”
Sixtine simply shook her head. “I have been told that it's better that way. You know, too traumatic. But that story I hear people tell isn’t scary at all. It's a fairytale, like one of Grimm's fables. Something that scares children into behaving well.”
She cast a hand out, gesturing at the shadows that fell across the walls of the gallery. “The terrifying part is what I saw that was not there.”
“What do you mean?” said Max, his heart rate quickening.
“My brain was clinically dead then. It was not able to produce any thought, any dream, any memory, nothing. Everything should be a total blank. But it’s not.” She swallowed hard. “There were things in the darkness.”
Max let her words hang in the air of the dark and silent gallery, then asked: “What do you remember?”
Sixtine hesitated. Her head was held high, but her gaze couldn’t settle on anything. “A river. Underground. A green river teeming with gods with animal heads. A tribunal with forty-two jurors, a set of scales–”
“You saw Duat, the Egyptian underworld,” Max interrupted, his breath caught in his throat. “The ancients believed that all tombs linked to it. You must have dreamt it after you saw it when you were in Cairo, the images of the weighing of the heart are everywhere, and the gods presiding over it a dime a dozen in souvenir shops. It’s the equivalent of our Last Judgment, a divine tribunal deciding if the souls go to Heaven or Hell.”
“I guess I was meant for Heaven.”
“Did you see fields of reeds, like those of the Nile Delta?” asked Max.
“Yes.”
“The Fields of Aaru. Yes, that’s their paradise. Your heart must have been good. Is that any consolation?”
But before she could reply, he rushed to add, “I mean, it was all a vision anyway. It’s not like you actually went there.”
“Wherever I went, my heart betrayed me, so I was sent back. Apparently, I did not follow the Chapter Thirty of the Book of the Dead.”
Max frowned.
“Chapter Thirty of the… This is incredibly, err… specific. I’ve heard of the Book of the Dead, but… wait.”
He rummaged inside the backpack hanging on the handle of his wheelchair. He took out a couple of books, while a notebook crashed on the floor. Sixtine picked it up, making Max blush and fumble even more.
“Ah, err, I’ve got it here. List of spells in the Book of the Dead. Let’s see, chapter thirty. Yes, it’s just a heart spell, it doesn’t say much… Hang on. Chapter Thirty B.” He followed the text with his index finger. “‘An appeal to the heart not to betray its owner in the weighing of the heart ritual. Often inscribed on heart scarabs. The spell reads…’”
“My heart turned into a blue scarab while it was in the scales,” Sixtine interrupted. “I have no idea what it said, it spoke in a foreign language. It was enough for Osiris to decide to send me back.”
Max shot a glance towards her. A chill travelled down his spine. He carried on reading, hoping to find a flaw, an inconsistency.
“‘Oh my heart! Do not stand up as a witness against me, do not be opposed to me in the tribunal, do not be hostile to me in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance. Do not tell lies about me in the presence of the god.’ Wow. In all my research, I have never come across it. You must have really studied Ancient Egypt…”
“I studied law,” Sixtine pointed out. “Not Egyptian, and definitely not divine.”
“Then you probably had a crash course during… during that time you can’t remember.”
“Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.”
There was genuine anxiety in Sixtine’s eyes and Max regretted his suggestion. He had never been one to give credence to the beliefs of life after death. As far as he was concerned, all myths and all religions were a way for people in power to police the minds of the masses on earth, and encourage them to obey the rules of society. But the woman standing in front of him had barely survived a murder attempt and weeks of torture – if she wanted to make sense of it by piecing together her visions of the Egyptian underworld, he should support her, not suggest she was crazy.
He was trying to find something helpful to say when she asked, “Have you ever heard of a Night Traveler? And the Prophecy of Ma’at?” Max shook his head. “When they sent me back, they said the Night Traveler would go with me.”
“Well, one of the gods’ names translates as ‘traveler’,” Max suggested, “Khonsu, the god of the moon. The moon is said to travel in the sky every night. But I’m not an expert in Egyptian mythology. I studied the architecture of the pyramids and the rest I just picked up…” He paused, his stare fixed on something beyond Sixtine. “Hold on. Did you say an underground river? The first thing you said.”
“Yes, a green river.”
“Stories tell us that the Egyptian underworld has caverns and rivers. But more importantly, Herodotus, the first historian, in the fifth century BC, wrote about underground canals, that would have been the main access to the pyramid of Cheops. He described rooms surrounded by water, like an island.”
They looked at each other, the massive stone statues bearing witness. Then Sixtine gazed at him with her dark green eyes and whispered. “I know you’ve been trying to find the passage to Room X. I want to find it too. What I saw in the pyramid… I don’t believe in divine intervention, or in Tutankhamen's curse, for any of that. I believe in human intention. I need the truth. You can help me. Will you help me?”
Max did not answer immediately and interpreting his silence as reticence, Sixtine charged on. “I know you are working on your diploma but if it's money you need–”
“I don’t need money,” Max replied simply.
Before she could finish an apology, he said firmly, “Of course, I'll help you.”
His reward was a smile so warm with genuine appreciation that Max felt the color rise in his cheeks. How could someone so beautiful possibly need him?
“I should tell you, there is something else,” Sixtine said, biting her lip.
Max was about to retort that after her tales of traveling the Egyptian underworld, nothing could surprise him much, but his words died in his throat and his eyes widened. She had taken off her gray sweater and lifted the hem of her white T-shirt.
On her naked navel, a tattooed cross.
He had seen this cross before, he was sure of it. But right now it lived in distant, hidden parts of his memory, and he was powerless to access them. Powerless to think, even. The contrast produced by the black pattern on her alabaster skin was hypnotic.
His hand touched the tattooed skin, and the sensation that greeted his fingertips belonged not to the here and now, but to an infinite array of possible futures that he could not even begin to grasp. Never in his life had he imagined that his very soul could be short-circuited by such a simple touch.
Love had revealed itself, already laden with the promise of pain; at that moment, he knew he would lose her. In saving Sixtine from the hungry jaws of death, their fates had become bound together. But in cheating the
natural order of things, there needed to be a correction.
Like a broken heart.
He heard Sixtine ask him not to speak of their conversation, nor even of her existence. Then in front of gods of stone, while the tips of his fingers still vibrated against the softness of her skin, he made a solemn promise to remain silent.
At the same time, in the deepest recesses of his being, he swore a silent oath that he would do anything to protect her.
In life, or in death.
31
Florence collected the pages of her document with haste, dropping her pens in the process and cursing profusely. She jogged to the meeting room on the third floor of the BBC Television building. She was the last to arrive.
On one side of the large meeting table sat Gayle, the fiery executive producer of the series, and of course, Andrew bloody Sheets. The tall, gangly redhead sat smugly next to their boss; Florence sighed inwardly as she remembered how, not content with usurping her position in Cairo, he seemed to spend as much time working on the Nefertiti project as he did trying to get Florence thrown off it.
But what made the meeting exceptional was the presence of two higher-ups who seldom deigned to attend the weekly production meetings. Opposite Gayle sat Jim, a brilliant and respected senior executive producer and next to him, Jane. Jane was a discreet and understated woman of forty-five, with tortoiseshell glasses, short blond hair and a distinctive accent that placed her origins in Harvard, Massachusetts. She was known for being as sparing with her words as with the budgets of the programs under her purview. As director of BBC2, she was also one of the most powerful women in the corporation.
They all drank tea from polystyrene cups as an intern nervously laid out an array of biscuits on a paper plate. As soon as Florence was settled, Jim began the discussion, his manner and posture clearly showing that everything being said was for Jane’s benefit.
“In the spring, we launch the season with great fanfare with an Egyptian evening. BBC1 already has the documentary on Nefertiti. It’s almost finished, right, Andrew, Florence?”
Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 14