by LJM Owen
‘So, will you be back at work tomorrow?’ Mai asked Elizabeth.
Both sisters worked in the Mahony Griffin Library, Mai upstairs in Asian Collections and Elizabeth in the Main Reading Room on the ground floor. ‘Yup! I have no idea how I’ll stay awake, though.’
‘Coffee, coffee, coffee,’ Sam said, her grin as sunny as her yellow T-shirt.
‘Perhaps endless cups of tea,’ Taid added.
Elizabeth cocked her head to one side, miming sleep. ‘Maybe both!’
Next came the noodles, which was great fun. The family vied with each other to extract the longest possible unbroken longevity noodle from a huge bowl of soup. Even Grandmère joined in the mess-making.
Exhausted after their own gustatory activities, Loki and Paris had formed a perfect puddle of caramel fur in one cane chair, while the large grey and white Thoth curled protectively around her tiny grey sister, Seshet. Not one cat glanced up as the occasional splash of duck stock flicked in their direction.
As dessert loomed, Mai went to the kitchen to nervously bring out trays of sticky cakes.
‘Mai made them,’ Matty said, spraying crumbs down his front. ‘Aren’t they great?’
Everyone at the table ate one and commented on how delicious it was, except, Elizabeth noticed, Sam. Was there an animal product in the dessert that she objected to?
At long last everyone rose to the tune of light groaning, helped to set the first load of plates in the dishwasher, then took their mandatory mandarin into the loungeroom. Grandmère Maddie cued a Miss Marple special for their afternoon viewing, as Matty’s fruit fell from his lap and rolled across the floor. He was the first to succumb to a food coma.
Elizabeth thought ahead to her first session as a tutor. She would be one of several assistants running tutorials for Dr Marsh’s year-long course, covering the archaeology of the Olmec, Toltec, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec societies. Her own investigations over the past two years into skeletal remains recovered from both Olmec and Maya sites had prepared her well for this new challenge, and the prospect of a room full of students who were as deeply interested in archaeology as she – eager to discuss it, debate it, soak in it – filled her with excitement.
Perhaps life had thrown her a curved ball or two, and she couldn’t be the Egyptologist she had always planned to be – at least, not until Matty’s medical bills were paid off. But she was on the road to becoming a published archaeological researcher by virtue of the Olmec and Maya papers she was preparing with her colleague Alice and she was about to embark on what she hoped would be a long and illustrious teaching career. Altogether, not too shabby!
Composing a mental list of all the points she wanted to cover in her first class, Elizabeth’s eyelids seemed to close of their own accord as the murder mystery’s opening credits rolled…
—
Striding along dark green squares of worn, musty carpet in the university archaeology building, Elizabeth beamed. Turning off the corridor into her designated teaching room, a quiet ‘Yes!’ escaped her. After years of attending tutorials in this very room, she was about to be the tutor. She smiled fondly at the cool cement walls, witness to so many passionate arguments over the interpretation of archaeological evidence during her undergraduate years. Decades of notices applied with sticky tape had left marks on the paint, as had half-hearted attempts to cover the damage. The effect was of a room that appeared to be decorated with a multi-layered pastiche of creams and greys, reminiscent of a peeling paperbark tree.
Stowing her Rosetta Stone satchel near the door, Elizabeth rearranged the room’s Formica-covered tables to form a hollow square so that students could debate across it while looking at each other. She counted the chairs to ensure there were sufficient for the number enrolled in her group, then spaced them evenly around the square.
Taking a seat facing the door, Elizabeth arranged her own belongings in front of her and began to flick her cartouche necklace back and forth, breathing deeply. She managed to drift into such a calm space that she didn’t register her first student approaching the room, and jumped a little at the rap on the door.
Nerves swirling, Elizabeth smiled and welcomed people as they filed in and claimed places. As the final person wandered in, a tall, shaggy-haired guy with bloodshot eyes, she began: ‘Welcome, everyone, to this tutorial for Mesoamerican Archaeology 101A. We’ll be together for the whole year, so –’
She was interrupted by the shaggy-haired man, who pushed back his chair and muttered, ‘Sorry, wrong class.’ He stumbled out, hunched against the eyes of the room.
The group giggled nervously as the door closed behind him.
Elizabeth smiled tightly. ‘All right, let’s start again. My name is Dr Elizabeth Pimms and I’d like to welcome you all to this tute. I’ll begin by asking each of you to introduce yourselves, tell us why you’ve chosen this unit, and then we’ll walk through the assessment for the year. As you know, Dr Marsh’s area of focus is cross-cultural comparisons of female and male roles in ancient Mesoamerican societies, so most of the assignments revolve around that topic.’
One tall, extremely well-groomed student sitting directly opposite her nudged a similar-looking smaller male next to him. ‘Easy marks, eh?’ he said, with a grin.
The nudgee gave a half-hearted grunt of agreement.
With their matching tan polo shirts, turned-up collars, etched biceps, and gelled short back and sides, Elizabeth wondered if the two were brothers. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Just joking,’ the first young man said, his face so closely shaven and moisturised that the skin appeared plastic beneath the room’s fluorescent lights.
‘Let’s start with you, then,’ she said to the would-be comedian. ‘What’s your name and why have you chosen this course?’
‘I’m James, and this is David,’ James said, indicating his mini-me. ‘We’re both doing arts-laws degrees. We’re taking some archaeology units to fill out the arts side.’
‘Do you have any particular interest in Mesoamerican archaeology?’
‘Digging up a Lara Croft or two, maybe.’ James snorted.
The voice of reason in her phrenic library advised Elizabeth to move on to the rest of the introductions. Pointing her pen at a young woman sitting on the other side of him, she asked, ‘And you?’
‘Hi. My name’s Carol. I’ve loved archaeology since I was a little girl, and I…’
Elizabeth inhaled deeply as Carol explained her passion in great detail. Not only did she share Elizabeth’s blazing love of archaeology in all its permutations, her choice of simple black trousers and a striped black and white Breton shirt mirrored Elizabeth’s own today. Comforted that she would have at least one student with whom to engage, Elizabeth indicated that the student on Carol’s left should introduce herself.
As the hour ticked by, James remarked on a few statements made by others in the class. Nothing offensive, but for some reason, each of them prickled.
Her first tutorial drawing to an end, Elizabeth sighed. It hadn’t been anywhere near as enjoyable as she’d hoped. Perhaps she needed to adjust her expectations of the tutoring experience to find the joy in it…which would require a pot of apple tea, a cat and some pondering time.
—
After a refreshing Sunday-afternoon limp in the bush behind her home, serenaded by warbling magpies, screeching cockatoos and chirruping rosellas, Elizabeth settled on her bed in front of a fan with her laptop and dialled Henry’s number on Skype.
‘Professor Pimms!’ The New Yorker’s friendly grin filled the screen. ‘How’re you? How’s the ankle?’
Elizabeth felt uplifted immediately. ‘Fair to middling, Sir Henry.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, you know, the ankle is mostly better and I’m…home.’
In his lovely wood-panelled apartment, Henry shrugged his shoulders. ‘I know whatcha mean. It’s a relief to
be out of the heat, and being back at work is great, but…’
‘It’s not Egypt?’
‘No.’ Henry waggled a finger, the sleeve of his heavy woollen cable-knit jumper sliding up to his elbow. ‘It’s not. It was fun while it lasted, right?’
‘Great fun! But given that you pretty much ate everything in the country, I bet you’re happy to be back on the island of endless cuisine. Is there any food left within a fifty-mile radius of Manhattan?’
‘Cast your aspersions elsewhere, young lady!’
‘Really?’
‘Well… I may have finally given in and tried one of those deep-fried cricket tacos.’
‘And?’
‘Overkill on the crunch.’
‘And?’
‘Maybe I also gave a ramen burger a go.’
‘Dare I ask?’
‘Two deep fried patties of ramen noodles instead of a bun, wrapped around your burger of choice. In my case, lots of bacon and dripping with cheese.’
‘Oh, dear gods, how have you not had a heart attack or developed diabetes yet?’
‘Exercise, exercise, exercise! And lots of salads between cardiac indulgences. Balance in all things.’
‘Of course.’ Elizabeth smiled at the screen. ‘And you’ve adjusted back to normality otherwise? Ow!’
‘What?’
Lying on the bed beside her, Thoth had draped a possessive paw across her leg. ‘Just my furry fan club getting a bit carried away,’ she said, unhooking a claw from her cargo pants.
‘The price of love.’ Henry chuckled. ‘As for my readjustment to the everyday… I love my job so it’s always good to go to work, but it feels a bit, I don’t know, lonely.’
Elizabeth realised they hadn’t talked much about Henry’s friends and family while in Egypt. ‘I should have asked, do you have any friends who live nearby?’
‘No. I know a few people from work, but I see them in the office all day long. I think it’s more that I’m missing the excitement of discovering something new every day, like we did in Egypt…and, of course, your company.’
‘Aww.’
Henry waggled his finger at the screen again. ‘You’ve infected me with your archaeology bug.’
Henry had indeed become an Egyptophile. As soon as they had arrived in Karnak, Elizabeth had practically run from site to site, dragging Henry behind her. For his part, the philologist had been captivated by the avenues of carved colonnades of ancient Thebes, craning his neck to peer at their uppermost hieroglyphs as Elizabeth explained their original appearance and function. Five times taller than any human, they had once been covered with startlingly colourful reliefs of goddesses and gods, prayers and spells, all of which were intended to provide divine protection to those who lived and worked beneath them. ‘The archaeology bug bites everyone in the end!’
‘Like a scarab beetle in the derrière?’ Henry smirked.
‘Very funny.’
‘How about you? How’s the return to normality treated you?’ he asked.
‘It’s been okay…but part of me wishes we were still in Egypt too.’
‘How was your first tutoring session?’
‘I don’t want to admit it, but not as enjoyable as I’d hoped.’
‘What happened?’
‘I have a feeling that I’m going to spend a fair bit of time handling interpersonal dynamics in the room, which I’m not overly comfortable with. I just want to teach.’
‘Ah, the burdens of the professor.’
Elizabeth stuck out her tongue at the screen.
‘How about work? Has that been all right?’
She blushed at the memory of her week back at the Library. ‘Not exactly. I guess I had pretty bad jetlag for a few days. I ordered the wrong book for three clients in a row and really upset one of them.’ She had assumed, at first, that the string of errors was due to deliberate interference by the Phantom of the Stacks, an anonymous staff member known for retrieving work she or he considered to be of higher literary merit than the item requested by a borrower. Closer inspection of the electronic orders, though, revealed in each instance that it had been Elizabeth who had clicked the wrong record. ‘Not a great start to the year. Plus, none of my regulars showed up, which was a bit disappointing.’
There had also been an unsettling moment. When Elizabeth had related the theft of her journal in Cairo to Judy, her library supervisor, the older woman had shown no sympathy for the situation or the loss of the notebook. ‘I bet it felt good to chase the thief!’ was her only comment. While it had been exciting, something about her reaction hadn’t felt quite right. Elizabeth’s inner voice pointed out that quite a few of Judy’s reactions to events over the past two years had been a touch unusual.
‘So not as much fun as nutting out the secrets of the ancients?’ Henry said.
‘Definitely not!’
He leant toward his laptop screen. ‘Well… I have a proposal.’
Elizabeth giggled. ‘Oh, Henry, I wish I could say yes, but…’
‘I’m serious. You know I went to London for a few days on my way home?’
‘Yes.’
‘I spent a day at the British Museum, and they had an exhibition displaying skeletons from inside mummies.’
‘Wow!’
‘They scanned them while they were still in their wrappings, then used a 3D printer to re-create them. So what do you say?’
‘I’m lost?’
‘We have a 3D printer at my library, so I figured you’d have one too. I checked with Nathan and he said he can probably arrange access to one.’
Understanding dawned as Henry continued to sketch out his plan.
‘You said in Cairo that you wanted to find out who the prince in the Golden Tomb was. So why don’t we print out his skeleton and see if we can’t identify him?’
‘Henry! Is that possible? I mean, I’d love to, but how would we get the data to create the printouts, for a start?’
‘Have a little faith, Dr Pimms. I’ve already seen to that. The Cairo museum previously scanned the mummy for a major research project and the data is available online as we speak.’
Elizabeth threw both arms into the air, disturbing both her laptop and the reclining Thoth. ‘Huzzah!’
‘Can I take that as a yes?’
‘Yes!’
Egyptological investigations, mummies of obscured identity, 3D-printed skeletons – things were certainly looking up!
Chapter Three
That night, Elizabeth couldn’t wait for dinner to be over. As soon as she had helped clear the table and thanked Grandmère and Matty for the delectable mechoui beef with roast pumpkin, pine nut and pomegranate salad, she hobbled up the stairs to her bedroom as fast as her ankle would allow. She wanted some uninterrupted time in her phrenic library to review all she knew of the Golden Tomb.
It was time to re-enter the Egypt of archaeologists and scholars: the Egypt of Mary Brodrick and Kara Cooney, of Amelia Edwards and Hilda Petrie – Elizabeth’s Egypt! A land of searing winds and lifeless desert sands punctuated by the stunning bounty of the Nile; a land of colourful tombs filled with skeletal remains, grave goods and extraordinary scenes of a vibrant afterlife.
Closing the door to her bedroom, Elizabeth pulled her curtains against the late evening summer sun, lay on her bed and closed her eyes…
…and opened the carved rosewood door to her phrenic library. Through the windows opposite, behind sheer filmy curtains, it was darkest night. Reflected in the glass panes a crackling fire blazed, casting shadows along the endless bookshelves and museum plinths.
In an archetypal tableau of British contentment, two wing-backed leather chairs with matching ottomans were arranged in front of the fireplace to her right, with side tables supporting one steaming pot of tea and two delicate china cups. A striped orange cat, Billy, m
rowled from one of the chairs as he was patted by a recently revealed addition to Elizabeth’s inner sanctum.
‘Good evening.’
It is said that truly original thoughts are exceedingly rare. Given the number of humans who have existed across the aeons, the odds of generating a unique idea are stacked against the individual. So Elizabeth was certain there must be other people with the equivalent of her phrenic library – a mental storeroom containing everything she had ever read – in their heads.
Some had probably also given form and structure to their inner voice or, rather, as in Elizabeth’s case, a subconscious reconstruction of a person known to her only through documentaries and their body of work. Elizabeth doubted, however, that anyone else’s mind had chosen the same historical figure to represent their other self.
‘Why you?’ Elizabeth had demanded, the first time she had confronted the intruder in her phrenic library.
‘Because, my dear, I represent the most knowledgeable person you know in the field of human psychology. An area of understanding, I must say, in which you are often sorely lacking.’
A litany of Elizabeth’s mistakes from the past two years had sprung into her mind. ‘That makes some sense. But, still, why you?’
‘Let me put it this way. People argue with themselves all the time. You’ve simply given your debate partner an identity.’
‘I meant, why you specifically? Why not Khaenweset?’
‘You’ve seen my image, heard my voice and know my stories. The same cannot be said of Khaenweset. There’s no-one of whom you’ve had broad experience better suited to the task than I.’
After a significant pause Elizabeth had chuckled. There was a certain irony to the situation. The years of Grandmère Maddie’s Sunday-afternoon crime-film festivals had influenced her in more ways than she could have anticipated.
‘Essentially, what you’re saying is that the body in my library is Agatha Christie?’