by Splendid You
Turning, Simon pushed back his shining hat with the knob of his stick. “Ah! Good morning, Winslow! I had no idea you had returned, my dear fellow.”
“Yes, I came home a few months ago on leave. Listen, Archer, there’s something you should know. Last night, I came home rather late—after three, it must have been. I wasn’t taking much notice, but later on, I saw a rather queer thing. An unsavory character was standing right where you are now, looking up at your house.”
“That is strange, at so late an hour.”
“What’s queerer still is that he ran off the second I hailed him. Didn’t like the looks of it, I can tell you.”
“Well, thanks, Winslow. I’ll ask the constable to come by a bit more often and keep an eye out myself.” Turning to Julia, Simon said, “Shall we walk to the corner? We’ll have better luck finding a cab there.”
“Who do you think it was?” Julia asked excitedly.
“No one important, probably. A late-night reveler who’d mistaken his house, or someone looking for an address.”
“At three A.M., I’d grant you the first but not the second! Who’d dream of paying a call so late?”
“Don’t make a mystery. Miss Hanson. And pray don’t mention it to my sisters or mother. Mother is already convinced that every burglar in England has our home address in his pocket.”
Chapter Eleven
Entering the museum on Simon’s arm, Julia felt like a bride coming to her new home for the first time. She had been greatly impressed with the vast cool chambers last night when she’d been an illicit vagrant in these halls of learning. Now, with the full approval of one of its leading lights, she was nearly overwhelmed. She didn’t even mind his not carrying her over the threshold. People would have stared.
“Was there ever anything so wonderful?” she asked, breathing in the mysterious perfume of the air. The mingling of antique dust, camphor, and yellow soap went to her head more rapidly than champagne.
“Wait until it is complete. They say it will only take another ten years.” Simon smiled at her and the dizzy tingle in her head increased. “What would you like to see first? My ... my exhibition?”
Julia reminded him, with a confessional air, “I saw it last night.”
“It looks different by daylight. Come on.” He squeezed her hand under his arm. By his smile, she could tell that he was eager to have her opinion of his work, and that gave her a greater thrill yet. Was he coming to respect her, at all?
The guards saluted him as he passed, straightening up and touching their caps with two fingers. “The hardest thing was getting proper glass cases. You would not credit it were I to tell you what people are allowed to touch in here. I believe the oils on a pair of even clean fingers can do more damage to a vase than three thousand years of being buried in the ground. But even the fingers are not so bad as those fools who ... like that one, there!”
He stopped dead, frowning. Julia followed his condemning finger to see a black-suited man pointing out the perfections of a Gobelin tapestry to a crowd of interested ladies. Unfortunately, he was doing his pointing with the steel tip of his umbrella.
Skewering a half-clad goddess, he said, “See how this figure represents the snare of carnal love by dropping burning honey into the mouth of this figure ... er... Mars, is it?”
Simon walked up and tapped the man on the shoulder. “I beg your pardon, sir, please don’t do that.”
“Eh? Do I know you, sir?”
“I’m Archer of the museum. If you’d be so good as to not stab the tapestries. You’re not Hamlet, you know.”
Julia saw that some of the younger ladies had recognized Simon and were whispering behind their hands. Some cast envious glances upon her. Rather to her shame, she found being the focus of their jealousy to be quite gratifying. She tried to look unaware of their interest but couldn’t help wishing she had worn a smarter frock. She must remember to have her luggage sent on to her house at once.
“Indeed, sir!” the gentleman was saying. ‘That tapestry and everything else in this museum was purchased by Her Majesty’s government for the good of her citizens. I have as much right to poke this tapestry as any man in England, having paid for it with my taxes.”
“Which is no right at all, sir. If everyone dragged steel sticks across this magnificent cloth, how much of it would be left at the end of a year? If you are so concerned about your taxes, I suggest you preserve what is bought with them so that the government will not have to spend more to replace what you have so wantonly ravaged! Good day, sir!”
Continuing on their way, Simon said, “If it were left to me, everyone would have to check their umbrellas at the door. Walking sticks, too, unless strictly necessary for locomotion.”
“That seems reasonable enough.”
“The Board of Governors won’t hear of it. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, it seems his umbrella is his figurative sword.”
“It could be worse. Men like that could still carry actual swords, as they did in King George’s era. Imagine how much damage they could do then!”
‘‘Don’t, Miss Hanson. You’ll give me nightmares.”
He fished out from his pocket the key to the tall door of the Egyptian Gallery. “How did you get in last night? Wasn’t the door locked?”
“No, it was ajar. I just pushed on it and it opened.”
“Strange. I had thought it was understood that this room was to be kept locked until my exhibition opens. I shall have to have a word with the watchman.”
‘The Scot,” she said under her breath.
“Yes, Douglas. He’s a good fellow, though I suspect he drinks.” He shook the door handle. “Well, it’s locked now.”
He turned the key and opened the door wide. Though sunlight came through the high windows, at floor level the shadows still lingered. “Let me turn up the lights.”
Julia stood on the threshold while Simon went about turning up the gas jets. She felt as if she were watching him illuminate a stage on which all the history of the world had taken place. Early canopic jars gleamed alabaster white, followed by dark statues of gods and men mingled into one alien form, and everywhere the glint and gleam of gold.
“Come in,” he said. “Let me show you what I found....”
Julia wanted to follow him—she had come so far and thought so long about this very moment—but could not force herself to take even one step forward. She looked at him, biting one corner of her lower lip. “I’m afraid,” she said. “Isn’t that silly?”
He came hurrying back to her, his long strides resounding over the marble floor. “Afraid? Of what?” He gave her the kind of humoring grin one offers a nervous child. “Not of the mummies, by any chance?”
“Of course not!” she said with force. “I wandered around in here last night with never a qualm. My friends would have been terrified of the statues, let alone the mummies. I was only interested in them for their own sakes. No. This is ... something else.”
Simon took her hand and started to chafe it lightly. “I can understand your fears. Something strange happened to you last night in this very room. Naturally you are a little reluctant to enter it again. Once, in Cairo, I was attacked by a man with a very large knife. He was a madman, I think, who believed the old gods were talking to him, telling him to destroy the infidels who were digging up the ancient kings.” He cleared his throat. “Your—um— visitor didn’t happen to mention anything of that sort, did she?”
Julia couldn’t decide whether to reprove him or to smile, so she combined the two, acknowledging his attempt at humor with a smile even while she said, “She didn’t seem to care what had happened to her body. But I want to know what happened with the man who attacked you in Cairo.”
“He had a heart attack shortly after I knocked him down. I think it might have been his chest pains that drove him to attack me on that particular day. But what I’m trying to tell you is, after that it was days before I could walk past where it had happened without perspiring like a f
ish. Usually the heat doesn’t bother me; even that year I stayed weeks past the digging season. But as I walked down al-Qasaba, the great high street that runs through Cairo’s heart, whenever I came to the tomb of Kalaoun the heat seemed to push down on me like a giant hand. I couldn’t even breathe until I was safely past.”
Without her realizing it, Simon had drawn her step by step into the room of antiquities while relating his story. She hesitated, then nodded. “You’re right. The only thing to do is face up to it.”
Somewhat cautiously, she looked around her. “What do you consider the cream of your find?”
His eyes spoke of his approval of her courage, but he said, “Oh, that’s too hard to answer. But if you were to hold my feet to the fire and demand an answer, it would have to be the coffin itself. The images are really splendidly preserved—as clear as the day they were first inscribed.”
“I know. You sent me a copy.”
“But to see them in reality! Come here.”
As they crossed the floor, he said, “One day I hope some clever man will invent a better light than gas lamps. They deposit a witches’ brew of residue and dirt over everything, which is nearly impossible to remove without damaging the items. However it is still an improvement over candles. We must use them in the tombs, unfortunately.”
Julia didn’t listen. She was gazing upon the face of An-ket. She’d been delighted by its remote beauty as revealed by the uncertain light of Mrs. Pierce’s lantern, but now she was even more pleased ... now that she knew the priestess personally. Julia raised her eyes to Simon’s face. “I know you think I was temporarily insane last night....”
“I never said that.”
“Well, you thought I’d been thrown off my balance by the things that had happened.”
“That, perhaps.”
“But I tell you now, plainly and simply, I do believe that magic touched me last night. I did speak with An-ket-en-re, Priestess of Hathor. Somehow she could speak through Mrs. Pierce the charwoman.”
His face had grown hard and remote. “And the cat, according to you.”
“And the cat. I can’t deny to you that these things happened, but I promise not to speak of them to anyone else.”
“Thank you for that, at any rate. After my clash with Dr. Mystery, and all the things I have said about spiritualism, if I were known to harbor someone making such claims ...” He almost seemed to shudder.
“It would be difficult for you to be taken seriously?”
“Impossible!”
“Therefore, by telling you the truth I have ruined my chances of ever being taken seriously by you?”
He couldn’t meet her eyes. Julia sighed. “I thought so. Perhaps I should have lied to you.”
“No.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Never tell me lies.”
She felt again the tremulous anticipation that she had known the evening before when she’d read hunger in his eyes, not for the supper he had missed, but for her. Wild ideas raced through her mind. What would he do if she reached up to kiss him? What would he do if she brazenly drew his hand down from her shoulder to caress her body?
Julia could not say where such wild ideas had come from. Before she could steel herself to act on her impulses, she noticed that Simon was looking up at the ceiling. His eyes were narrowed against the sunlight.
“I thought you said one of the windows had broken. Which one?” His hand dropped away.
“It had.” She turned and scanned the rectangles of glass. “How odd.”
“And where did you say that burglar was standing ... ?”
“Over there. By the broken display case. With An-ket's jewelry in it.”
“There is no broken case. Look.” He stepped over to the glass box and ran his fingers over the slick surface. “You see. Quite whole. Not even cracked. Not even scratched.”
“Someone must have replaced it.” Julia was aware that a pleading note had entered her tone.
“Ah! That’s possible, but not very likely. As is the case with so many bureaucracies, the museum is slow to dispense funds for anything of less than immediate necessity.”
“Wouldn’t replacing a window and a display case fall under the heading of ‘immediate necessity,’ especially when you consider our native weather and how soon the public will be permitted to enter here? Even if people are allowed to handle some of the museum’s treasures, surely no one would allow them to take such liberties with such rare and valuable jewelry.”
“I suppose it is just possible that these repairs were made with such incredible speed. It hardly seems British, however.”
Though she knew he was still disbelieving, Julia judged that any further protestations on her part would only solidify his suspicions. Instead, she turned again to the sublime example of the funerary arts before her.
Every inch of the coffin was covered with small pictures showing the reception of An-ket’s spirit into the Egyptian Underworld. There, guided by some gods and opposed by others, she would make her perilous way to the chamber where Osiris awaited her. He was the judge, but there were many tests before her ka would reach him. Everything in the Underworld had a name. The soul must be able to address each thing—even the doorposts—by its proper name to prove its purity before the journey of the dead could be completed. Julia wondered if An-ket remembered these tests. Had she really done all the things her religion had prescribed?
She recoiled from the idea. Surely the faith she herself followed was perfect and the faith of the ancients was flawed. To doubt that would be to doubt herself, a thing with which she’d never had any patience.
To distract herself, she glanced at the small white card lying beside the coffin. In small, precise script, she read the translation of the hieroglyphics that wrapped the coffin in the same lines that linen bandages covered the body within.
“Goodness ... that can’t be right.”
“What cannot?”
“This translation. Surely not.”
“I don’t think there’s anything amiss with it. It runs in the usual style of such things. Prayers for guidance and testimony as to the purity of the dead traveler’s heart.”
“Yes, but it’s so dreary. No poetry at all. Just the same old ...” her voice trailed off. Something about the litany as written down in black and white seemed familiar. She scanned the rest of the card until she came to a name more familiar still.
This translation is gratefully acknowledged as the work of Miss J. Hanson.
She looked at Simon with sparkling eyes. He shuffled his feet, giving her a sideways glance. “Oh, Simon!” she said. Dropping her handbag, she threw her arms about him.
“This is the best gift... everyone will see my name and know that I... you even put ‘Miss’ so no one will dare assume that I’m a man.”
He stood rigid inside her embrace. Realizing she’d gone much, much too far, she backed hastily away, feeling as though her cheeks were on fire. “I beg your pardon.”
“Not at all. I understand your excitement. If I were in your place, I would be ex ... elated, too.”
“Elated. Yes. That’s how I feel. And grateful.”
His embarrassment seemed to grow more pronounced. “I’ve done nothing you need to be grateful for.”
“But you have! No one has ever given me such a wonderful gift. No one has ever given me credit for my translations before. I told you how I don’t fit in very well among my friends. They all think it’s absurd to, as one used to say, ‘mess about with dirty old stones and bits of paper.’ Even my father—
“I thought he didn’t mind your work.”
Julia pressed both her hands to her heart and cast her eyes upward in rapture. “My work. No one’s ever called it that. ‘Messing about,’ “overtaxing my feeble female mind,’ ‘scribbling away ...’ “
“ ‘Feeble female mind?’ Who on earth would say that to you, of all people?”
“Our former vicar used to be employed at a school for young ladies of good family. He came away with
a very poor opinion of learned women.”
“But your father doesn’t share that opinion.”
“I think, secretly, he does. He is proud of what I have accomplished, make no mistake. But he doesn’t understand it and has never made the least push to try. He’s not prone to rolling up my latest work as a spill to light his cigars or anything cruel like that; he’ll hardly come into my studio even with my permission. It’s just that he really can’t love it as I do. Perhaps it’s too much to ask of anyone.”
“I know exactly what you mean. He’s content to leave all such mysteries to you. My mother is the same way. When I talk to her about anything, even my discoveries, she nods and smiles in the precise way she did when I first began excavating the garden at age three.”
“Did you do that? I can imagine you, towheaded and intent.”
“I used to bring some fairly revolting things into the house, expecting Mother to coo over them. To do her justice, she generally managed to be pleasant about my unfortunate obsession.”
“Exactly,” Julia said on a laughing note. “Giving orders that one may dig as much as one likes, even if it meant the gardener gave notice.”
“And preventing the maid from sweeping out the corner where you kept your treasures. I was quite sure once I found the toe bone of Jack the Giant Killer’s on the gravel walk in Kensington Gardens. That was some years after we moved to London.”
“I found a unicorn’s horn. Or at least the very tip. When it turned out to be a seashell, I cried for two days.”
“I have found better things than that. Let me show you.”
Julia realized the difficult moment had passed. He still did not trust her version of last night’s events, yet he obviously found her to be good company. Almost as good as he is to me, she told herself.
She did not have to pretend an interest in the things he showed her. Even if the flash of gold hadn’t attracted her attention, the lovely white cards that bloomed on every case bore her name. She felt she could never grow tired of seeing those twelve words strung out in their entirety, save one.