“Maybe.”
Roberto scratched his wispy beard as though it itched. “My money is on Dr. Mallawi. I think she ransacked our tent while we were excavating.”
I considered the possibility. “I’m not ruling it out, but when she crawled into the tent with me, her expression was genuinely surprised. I don’t think she’s responsible.”
Roberto waved a hand at the field crews walking across the site. “Well, there are around two hundred other possibilities. Plus one.”
I glanced at him. Sweat-soaked brown hair dangled around his sunburned face. “What do you mean? Plus one?”
Quietly, he said. “If it was a demon that emptied our packs in Samael’s cave, who’s to say it didn’t follow us here and do it again?”
I frowned at the chunk of ancient green glass sparkling in the sunlight in front of me. “Right.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Around seven, the dinner bell clanged, and the field crews began to climb out of pits and wipe their sweaty faces on their sleeves. Conversation and laughter erupted as people stopped work for the day and moved toward the tents, their faces shining in the deep amber gleam cast by the setting sun. As the day cooled off, the scent of the marshes became stronger, filling the air with the fragrances of water and greenery.
My gaze was on Moriarity and Mallawi who stood about fifty paces away with Samael and three Egyptian laborers. The hunchbacked elder was standing in the bottom of a meter-deep unit, smiling beatifically, but no one was paying him the slightest attention. Moriarity and Mallawi were engaged in a heated conversation. Mallawi kept waving her arms at her husband, as though to drive home some point.
Roberto, who sat cross-legged on the far end of our excavation unit, said, “Dear God, tell me it’s quitting time?”
“Yeah, looks like our first day as archaeologists is over. Let’s pack our tools in the dig kit and head for our tent.”
“Great. I’ve had enough fun excavating hot sand to last me a lifetime.” He handed me his trowel, and jumped out of our pit. As he dusted off his pants, he said, “Don’t these people know that a work day is 8 to 5?”
I tucked his trowel into my kit, along with mine, and reached for the other tools. “They only have one month here, Roberto. I guess they work as long as they have light.”
“Yeah, well, this qualifies as an Asian sweatshop.”
While I finished packing my brushes and dental tools, I watched Moriarity and Mallawi walk purposefully for one of the ramadas where the artifacts were bagged for transport. They’d left Samael and the three laborers by the pit to clean up. Tools clattered as they put them away.
Samael climbed out of the pit and slowly turned around as though getting his bearings, maybe from the constant sea breeze blowing in off the ocean, then he cocked his ear to listen for voices. The laborers seemed afraid of him. They’d moved a few paces away and stood whispering to each other, while they cast uneasy glances at Samael. The Oracle of Egypt.
Alone, Samael started making his way across the site, using his walking stick to steady his steps.
Roberto said, “Where’s he going? There’s nothing out there.”
“I think he needs help finding his way.”
“Okay, why don’t you give me the dig kit, and I’ll take it back to our tent and stow it. Then I’ll meet you at the cook tent.”
“Sounds good. See you there.”
I handed Roberto the pack and climbed out of our unit. After I dusted off my pants, I trotted toward Samael.
When the elder heard my approaching footsteps, he stopped and stared at me with those eerie white eyes. “There you are.”
“Yes, sir, I thought you might need help getting to dinner.”
He gave me a toothless smile. “Not yet. Come look, please?”
“Did you find something?”
“Yes. At the unit dug by James and Sophia.”
I noticed that the three other laborers had sat down on the rim of the excavation pit and started smoking cigarettes.
When we arrived, one of the men smiled at me with rotted teeth and extended a hand to the excavation. “See? Look. Samael found.”
I knelt and frowned down at the entwined skeletons. Their lower bodies were covered by a limestone stela: a large inscribed tablet. About one meter wide and two meters long, it must weigh two hundred pounds. It was a beautiful thing, but what struck me was the Greek word on the stela: Kleopatra.
I suddenly seemed to be looking down at myself from a great height, and the magnificent city of Per Amun was alive below me, bustling, both branches of the impossibly blue Nile filled with barges and fishing boats. The scents of lime-laden dust and lemons rode the breeze as the two bodies were placed in the grave.
“Can I jump down to get a better look?”
Samael said, “Carefully, yes.”
I lowered myself into the rectangular pit and studied the stela. The Queen of Egypt, dressed in male garb, stood on the right side of the stone, offering a baby to the goddess Isis. Though this stela was much larger, I’d seen photos in a book that showed a similar stela in the Cairo Museum. The museum’s stela had been inscribed during the first few months of Cleopatra’s reign, and was the oldest evidence of her rulership. At the time she had shared the throne with her brother, though his name was absent on both this stela and the one in the Cairo Museum.
My heartbeat sped up when I shifted my gaze to the entwined skeletons. The large skeleton on the right had his arms around the small skeleton, which I assumed was a woman.
“What did Dr. Moriarity and Dr. Mallawi think about this?”
The laborers watched me with half-squinted eyes. They’d risen and begun collecting their tools.
Rotted teeth said, “They argue. She thinks it is two women. He don’t.”
“Does this part of the site date to the first century BC?”
“Yes.”
Samael stared down at the skeletons with such an expression of love, his wrinkles twisted into odd cavernous lines. “Per Amun is where it began for the Ptolemies, you know? Her most magnificent relative was Alexander the Great. After his death in 323 BC, Alexander’s general, Ptolemy I, seized Egypt. In 321, Ptolemy kidnapped Alexander’s body and brought it here to Pelusium. In 102, Cleopatra III defeated her brother and won Egypt here. And in 48, Cleopatra VII launched the rebellion here that would lead her to become the Queen of all Egypt. So many moments in her family history were tied to this city. It was very dear to her.”
“Then you think more of her children may be buried in Pelusium?”
Samael gave me a toothless smile. “She would not have buried her loved ones in Alexandria out of fear that those graves would be obliterated by her enemies. Or worse, the bodies exhumed to be paraded through the streets of Rome as symbols of Octavian’s victory.”
“Which is exactly what would have happened. Octavian hated her.”
Samael gestured to the skeletons. “Do you see that hand? The larger skeleton’s left hand? That’s where we found it.”
The dagger. He doesn’t want to mention it in front of others.
I tried to imagine how the dagger would have lain in the skeletal fist. The fist had been wrenched into a strange unnatural angle, which meant the hand had been deliberately twisted to hold the dagger in a certain way.
“So he was a Sem priest?”
Samael’s old head tottered on the frail stem of his neck. He looked like he was about to faint from heat prostration. “No. Come, now. Let us leave the Ka souls in peace and find water. Been a hot day.”
He waved for me to come out of the pit, which I did not want to do. If this wasn’t the burial of the Sem priest, as Moriarity believed, then the small skeleton in front of me might be Cleopatra. If it was . . . Could the larger skeleton be Marcus Antonius? Had they been buried together after all, as she’d requested? If so, I need to place the d
agger in the grave beside the woman.
Swallowing hard, I climbed out of the pit and gripped Samael’s elbow. As I guided him toward the cook tent, I said, “Samael, have you heard their voices? Is it possible that the bodies are Cleopatra and Antonius?”
He shook his head. “It’s two women.”
Though I had the urge to rush, I couldn’t. Samael needed me to walk slowly. He was swaying on his feet, as though completely exhausted by the day’s labors. “Why did Dr. Moriarity think it was a man and a woman?”
Releasing my arm, he touched his forehead. “James said the larger skeleton had a male brow ridge. Sophia disagreed. She wished to ask Dr. Corbelle to look at skeletons. He didn’t want to.”
“Why would they ask Dr. Corbelle?”
“They are archaeologists. Corbelle is a biological anthropologist. She knows more about skeletal remains than they do.”
As the mystery deepened, my historical imagination started running wild. After Antonius’ death Cleopatra had asked for and obtained permission from Gaius Julius to prepare Antonius’ body for burial. She spent two days purifying his body with oils of cedar and cinnamon. Then, on August 3rd, 30 BC, she begged that she be allowed to bury Antonius herself, a request Gaius Julius granted.
“Plutarch wrote that Cleopatra buried Antonius with her own hands, feverishly, lavishly.”
“Yes, that’s right. Iras and I helped her. I have forgotten many things from that time, but not that terrible day. Afterward, she tried to starve herself to death. It was heartbreaking. When Gaius Julius discovered she was ill and refusing to eat, he sent soldiers to watch over her every move, and threatened her children if she tried to kill herself.”
“And she pleaded for an audience with Gaius Julius, didn’t she?” This discussion was so fascinating I couldn’t take my eyes from the old man.
“Yes. He came. On August 8th, Cleopatra found herself face-to-face, for the first time in her life, with her mortal enemy. Six years younger than she, Gaius Julius was about five-foot-seven with blond hair. He was so uneasy in her presence, he spent the entire time squirming and shifting. She asked only one thing: ‘Grudge me not burial with him.’ She wanted only to rest with Antonius.”
The old man had tears in his voice, as though seeing it all again in his memory.
“Plutarch wrote that he made her no promises.”
“True. Just before she died, she’d begged the soldier, Epaphroditus, to carry one final letter to him, asking again to be buried with Antonius.”
I watched his wrinkles deepen as he closed his eyes against emotion.
“Was she buried with Antonius?”
A pained smile came to his face. “By that time, I was dead. I do remember that before Antonius’ death, she had consulted with a handful of merchants about transporting the bodies of her loved ones to safe places. She fully expected they would all be murdered and paraded through the streets of Rome. She would have done anything to avoid that humiliation.”
That was an interesting detail, if true. According to Plutarch, Gaius Julius honored her request and buried her with royal splendor beside Antonius in the center of Alexandria adjacent to a temple of Isis. Which would have been strange, indeed. Why would Gaius Julius go to such lengths to create a monument to Cleopatra and Marcus Antonius that would last for centuries, and then go to even more extraordinary lengths to erase them both from every historical record? Plutarch recorded that Alexandrian priests came to Gaius Julius to offer him 2,000 talents, an extraordinary sum, to preserve the many statues of Cleopatra that adorned the city. The only reason they would have made that request was if those statues were being systematically destroyed by Gaius Julius or his soldiers. The soon-to-be emperor began rewriting history even before her death, but afterward he was in a hurry to get rid of the evidence. He dedicated himself to making certain her name and beautiful face were forgotten. So a monument seemed extremely unlikely.
As we walked, Samael’s shuffling feet created an erratic rhythm in the sand. He was holding tightly to my arm, his fingers digging into my flesh. This must be hard for him. He’d been on his feet for most of the day. At the cook tent, people had already started to line up. The benches at the tables were filling fast. By the time we got through the dinner line with our plates, there would be no places to sit, just like lunch. The spicy scent of the tagine wafted on the breeze, making my empty stomach growl.
I looked around for Dr. Corbelle. I didn’t see her, or most of her crew. They’d probably gone through the line first and were already gone. Except for Sarah, who sat at the far table with Moriarity, Bates, and Jones.
To the west, the sun perched like a brilliant red ball just above the horizon. Full darkness was an hour away, but that didn’t give us much time to eat and go see the other excavations. Plus, I was really tired. I was eager to eat and go to bed. It was my turn to sleep first, for which I was really grateful. Though I’d be up at two am for my watch, I’d get a solid six hours of sleep.
As we neared the food line, I said, “Samael, could I ask you a question in confidence?”
The elder looked up at me. “Of course.”
“You’ve been to the Island of the Two Flames. How did you get there?”
The wrinkles around his eyes deepened. He propped his walking stick and took another careful step forward. “There is a passageway.”
“Where? Why couldn’t you find it when you tried to take Dr. Moriarity?”
We had reached the food line. As I walked Samael past the people to get to the far end of the line, the scent of stale sweat rose. It had been a very hot day. I wondered how someone took a shower out here.
Samael exhaled a deep breath. “I could have.”
“But I thought—”
“He wasn’t ready.”
The old man frowned blindly at the sand. He kept putting one foot in front of the other. It had been so long since I’d asked the question that I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he softly said, “Why do you wish to go to the island of the dead?”
“I promised a friend—a dead friend who I loved very much—that I would help her get there.”
Samael gently squeezed my arm. “I knew her, too, you know.”
My head jerked around. “You knew Cleo?”
“Oh, yes. She was a sweet child. I played with her on this very site when she was young. She was very special and very dear to me.”
“It never occurred to me . . . But of course, you must have known her. You worked with her father for years.”
“Yes.”
I licked my chapped lips, before I asked, “Did you believe she was the reborn Queen Cleopatra?”
“There was not a doubt in my heart. The instant I looked into her eyes, I recognized her. And she knew things about me and ancient Egypt that no child her age could possibly have known.”
Before her death, I had always sort of believed Cleo. Then, afterward, I definitely believed her; but it was sobering to hear that the Oracle of Egypt believed her, as well.
As we neared the rear of the line, Roberto emerged from our tent and trotted toward us. He still wore his Colorado Rockies baseball cap. Brown hair stuck out at odd angles beneath the brim. I waited for him to arrive, then we stepped into the line and started slowly moving forward.
When we reached the table, I picked up a plate for Samael. “Can I fill your plate for you, Samael?”
“Thank you, yes. It’s hard to hold a plate and keep my balance.”
Roberto said, “Want me to fill your plate, Hal?”
“Sure, thanks, Roberto.”
As I used tongs to place a pigeon on Samael’s plate, the elder bowed his head. He seemed to be gazing at my hand while I spooned vegetables and sauce onto his plate. At the end of the table, a bread basket waited. The warm sweet fragrance told me it was teff bread. I put a roll on Samael’s plate, and over my shoulder told Ro
berto, “Two rolls for me, please?”
“No problemo, bro.”
Roberto had both plates balanced on his left arm while he scooped up food with his right hand. He’d given me two pigeons which I really appreciated. I was losing weight out here. Fast. But that meant I was always hungry.
I exited the line with Samael still holding tightly to my arm and looked around for a place to sit. From the far table, Dr. Moriarity stood up and waved at me.
“Over here, Hal. Jones and Bates are finished.”
I could tell that Jones and Bates were not finished. Their plates were still half-full, but both rose and yielded their places. As they walked away, they gave me unpleasant glances.
I set Samael’s plate down, then held his hand while he slid onto the bench and moved down to sit next to Sarah Wadsworth. She looked positively starstruck to be sitting next to the legendary old digger. When I slid in beside Samael, I moved down as far as I could. There was enough space, just barely, for Roberto’s narrow butt. Setting both of our plates down, he crammed himself next to me and smiled across the table at Moriarity.
“I want you to know that we found absolutely nothing today.”
Moriarity’s brows lowered. “Of course not. That’s why you’re there. To practice digging up nothing.”
“Well, tomorrow, could you throw in a few crappy artifacts and cover them up just so I can discover them?”
“No,” Moriarity said with a grimace. “That’s called ‘salting’ a site. It’s unethical.”
“Even in Arab culture?”
Moriarity forked a bite of pigeon into his mouth and chewed while he stared at Roberto. “In any culture. It’s basic professional ethics.”
Ripping open his roll, Roberto stuffed it with strips of pigeon, then strained the onions from the tagine sauce and mounded them on top the pigeon strips. Before he ate it, he dipped his sandwich into the tomato sauce, soaked it up and finally took a big bite. Red dripped down his chin, which he wiped off on his tan sleeve. “Hey, by the way, can I buy one of those potsherds with the wolves on them for my girlfriend Molly?”
Cries from the Lost Island Page 20