‘I will not dress in woman’s clothing again. It is an abomination to the Lord.’
‘Well, luckily our gods don’t forbid dressing up,’ said Flavia. ‘Jonathan, give me your turban. I’m going to pretend to be a boy!’
Jonathan sighed, unwound his indigo blue turban and handed it to Flavia.
As Flavia began to wrap the turban around her head, Lupus chuckled and wrote on his wax tablet: I AM USUALLY THE ONE IN DISGUISE.
Seth narrowed his eyes at Flavia. ‘How does a high-born Roman girl know how to bind a turban so expertly?’ he asked.
‘Simple,’ said Flavia. ‘Last month we travelled on a caravan from Sabratha to Volubilis, on a mission for the Emperor. I had to put my turban on every day. You should wear one, too. Otherwise you’ll be burnt by the sun.’
Seth shook his head. ‘I refuse to look like one of these heathen peasants. My skullcap is fine. I will not wear a turban.’
‘Well, I will!’ said Flavia, tucking in one end of the turban and adjusting the tail over her shoulder. ‘From now on I am an Egyptian boy.’
Jonathan pointed with his chin. ‘Here comes our guide,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t look as if he’s had any luck.’
Abu came running up to them and shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he panted. ‘Nobody has seen Nubian girl . . . or Alexandrian eunuch . . . But I can take you inside pyramid to look. There is a secret door high up. Not ground level. But door is hard to find. I show you for small fee.’ He looked at Flavia. ‘Ah! Wearing turban you look like boy. Very good, very good.’
Suddenly Lupus grunted and wrote on his tablet:
WHAT IF NUBIA IS IN DISGUISE?
‘Great Juno’s peacock!’ cried Flavia. ‘You could be right. She cut her hair at the Temple of Neptune. She might be pretending to be a boy, too!’
Flavia turned to Abu: ‘Our friends could have been travelling as a eunuch and a Nubian boy! Or even as two boys, one dark-skinned and one fair.’
‘Or as two girls?’ said Jonathan.
‘Two girls travelling alone would draw too much attention,’ said Seth.
Their young guide shook his head and led them towards the north face of the pyramid. ‘My friends do not see any Nubian here yesterday. Young or old, male or female. But that does not mean they were not here. There was camel market. Many people. Very crowding. Look.’ Abu bent down and picked up a handful of stone chips lying at the foot of the pyramid. ‘Do you see the lentils and half-peeled grains here, all made of stones? These were foods of a million workers who are building pyramids three thousands of years ago. These foods are now petrified over time. I know many other interesting facts.’
‘Oh!’ cried Flavia. ‘Some of them do look like lentils!’
Lupus put one in his mouth and tentatively bit down. Then he made a face and spat it out.
Flavia gazed up at the north face of the pyramid. ‘You say there’s a secret entrance?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘I don’t see anything,’ said Jonathan.
Abu smiled. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is because entrance is secret.’
‘Wait!’ said Seth. ‘Is this the pyramid with a moveable stone which leads down a sloping passage to a vault?’
Abu stared at the scribe. ‘How do you know this? You have been here before?’
Seth shook his head. ‘A Greek traveller called Strabo visited this place a hundred years ago. He wrote about it.’
Abu scowled. ‘He is correct.’ Then his face brightened. ‘Look! Here is my friend Psammiticus with oil lamps. I call him Psammi. He will accompany. If your friends are in pyramid, I promise we will find them.’
Abu led them up a slope of sand and now they could see shallow handholds cut into the white limestone slabs which formed the facing of the pyramid. Abu went up like a monkey. After a few pushes one of the great slabs gave a groan and tipped inward. It was not a wide entrance but Abu slithered through first, after taking the two oil-lamps from Psammi, a thin youth in a yellow tunic and turban. Psammi followed, then Lupus swarmed up and in. A moment later his grinning face appeared and he beckoned them on. Seth should have been next, but he stopped halfway into the entrance and wiggled back out, forcing Flavia and Jonathan to retreat.
‘Too narrow and too dark,’ he panted, moving over to the side. Although the morning was still cool, his plump face was red and sweating. ‘I’ll wait down there in the shade,’ he added, mopping his brow with his sleeve.
‘You are coming?’ Abu’s face appeared above them.
‘We’re coming,’ called Flavia. ‘All except for Seth.’
She found the footholds going up and eased herself into the entrance, trying not to think what would happen if the stone slipped and fell back into place. Abu and Psammi helped her jump down to a narrow corridor sloping steeply up. It was dark and surprisingly warm after the cool morning air, and there was barely enough room to stand upright. She looked around the dim, cramped tunnel. Already she was envying Seth’s decision to stay outside.
Jonathan thumped down onto the floor behind her and Psammi held up the lamp so he could dust himself off.
‘Ready?’ Abu’s voice echoed in the narrow space. ‘Let us find your friends.’
It was not the dust or the darkness or the oppressive stuffy heat of the pyramid that convinced Flavia to turn back. It was not the sense of foreboding or the knowledge that a million tons of rock hung over her head.
What sent Flavia whimpering back down the corridor to freedom and light were the giant bats in the Great Gallery.
When the explorers emerged from the pyramid two hours later, Flavia saw that Jonathan’s face was pale. When he reached ground level she could hear him wheezing.
‘Was it very terrible?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Awful. We went down one musty corridor after another and found nothing but cobwebs and dust and more bats.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘And someone had used one of the corridors as a latrine.’
‘Ugh!’ said Flavia, with a shudder. She turned to the others. Abu and Psammi looked tired, but Lupus was beaming.
‘You liked going inside the pyramid?’ she asked, in disbelief.
Lupus nodded vigorously.
‘Nubia wasn’t in there, was she?’
Lupus shook his head, and his smile faded.
‘Sorry, Flavia,’ sighed Jonathan. ‘It was all for nothing.’
‘Don’t be disappointed!’ said Flavia. ‘Seth and I found another clue! And something else. Something wonderful!’
‘Oh!’ groaned Jonathan. ‘Don’t tell me we went in there for nothing!’
‘Afraid so. Come look.’ She led them back to the east face of the great pyramid and pointed. Here at ground level, the slabs of white limestone covering the pyramid were crowded with graffiti, but Chryses’s fresh charcoal letters stood out clearly:
I navigate the waterless waves more easily than you’d think.
I take my cisterns with me, and rarely need a drink.
And though some call me ship, never will I sink.
‘I navigate the waterless waves . . .’ Jonathan read the riddle a second time, then frowned at Flavia.
‘Do you want me to tell you the answer?’ she said.
‘You know the answer?’
‘Of course!’ she said. ‘And Seth didn’t have to help me at all.’ She glanced over to a reed stall, where Seth sat nursing a beaker of mint tea.
She turned back to the boys. ‘Come on. It’s easy!’
Lupus held up his wax tablet. On it he had drawn a camel.
‘Well done!’ cried Flavia.
‘Of course!’ said Jonathan. ‘The camel navigates the sand sea and has its own water supply. And some people call it the ship of the desert.’
‘Now look at this,’ said Flavia. She pointed to another small graffito among all the others. It was also written in charcoal: NUBIA WAS HERE
‘It’s her handwriting, isn’t it?’ said Flavia, her eyes shining.
Lupus nodded, and gave Flavia a thumbs-up.
‘That means she’s still with Chryses,’ said Jonathan.
‘Exactly!’ Flavia looked at them eagerly. ‘We’ve got to solve that next riddle and find her. You didn’t see a camel inside the pyramid, did you? Not a real one, of course, but a drawing or hieroglyph. Anything. We need to find a camel.’
‘There was no camel inside the pyramid,’ said Jonathan.
Flavia thought for a moment and then turned to Abu. ‘Are there any big statues of camels around here, like that one?’ She pointed at the massive head of a sphinx emerging from the sand nearby.
The boy laughed. ‘No, he said. ‘We do not have big statues of camels here in Egypt. Camels are not known to pharaohs. You Romans are bringing them time of my father’s father’s father’s father.’
‘Oh,’ said Flavia.
Suddenly Lupus grunted. He was pointing at two hieroglyphs, a hand’s-breadth from the riddle.
Jonathan nodded. ‘What about those? They’re drawn with the same piece of charcoal.’
‘Great Juno’s peacock!’ exclaimed Flavia. ‘I was so excited about seeing Nubia’s message I didn’t even notice them . . .’
‘It’s the Seth animal again,’ said Jonathan. ‘The dog with the arrow tail. And the other is a drawing of a man with a crocodile head.’
‘Alas!’ cried Abu, ‘those signs are most ill-omened! Pay me so that I might flee!’
‘What?’ They all turned to look at him.
‘Pay me! Pay me!’
Flavia gave him a copper coin. Abu snatched it and ran off towards the village without saying thank you or goodbye.
The three friends stared after him, astonished. The donkey boys had been resting in the shadow of a stall and Flavia noticed them getting to their feet and looking after Abu’s retreating form with alarm.
She shrugged and turned back to the hieroglyphs.
‘Which god do you think that one is?’ She said examining the crocodile-headed god. She turned to look for Seth and saw him draining his beaker of tea in the shade of a stall near the donkey boys. ‘Seth!’ she cried, ‘Come here for a moment!’
At this, the donkey boys turned to stare at Seth. As the scribe trudged past them they shrank back in horror. Seth ignored them. ‘That was the worst mint tea I’ve ever had. It was full of sand.’ He shook his head with disgust and drops of sweat fell from his curly red hair.
‘Seth, we missed some more clues! Those hieroglyphs!’ Flavia pointed. ‘I know the Seth animal is you, but what does that one mean?’
‘That’s Sobek, the crocodile god.’
‘They have a god of crocodiles?’ Jonathan’s eyebrows went up.
‘Yes,’ said Seth. ‘Sobek is worshipped in—Ow!’ He put his hand to his forehead and brought it away covered with blood.
‘What was it?’ cried Flavia.
‘A rock!’ cried Seth in disbelief. ‘Someone threw a rock at me.’
Even as he spoke two more rocks flew past and one hit Seth on the shoulder.
They all turned to see the donkey boys watching Seth with narrowed eyes. One was poised to throw a stone. For a moment the two groups stared at each other, then the donkey boy threw his stone at Seth, striking him on his upraised arm. And now all the donkey boys were tossing small stones or handfuls of gravel, and calling out something in Egyptian. Flavia heard them chant the name: ‘Seth! Seth!’
Flavia screamed as a stone struck her arm.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ cried Jonathan. ‘Quickly!’
The four of them ran back towards the boat.
‘Crouch down!’ cried Jonathan. ‘Keep low. Lupus! No!’
Lupus had stopped to throw stones back at the boys. One of his stones struck down a donkey boy and the others gathered around him. For a moment the hail of stones ceased.
‘Come on, Lupus!’ cried Flavia and Jonathan together.
At last they saw the Scarab’s mast rising above the riverbank.
‘Nathan!’ screamed Flavia. ‘Help!’
As the boat came into sight below them they saw Nathan look up, his eyes wide.
‘Help!’ cried Flavia and Seth together.
‘Donkey boys!’ wheezed Jonathan. ‘After us!’
‘Get in!’ cried Nathan, hurriedly untying the rope which moored them to an acacia tree. ‘Hurry!’
Flavia and Seth thudded across the small gangplank but Jonathan and Lupus both jumped from the shore. While Nathan started to loose the sail, Jonathan grasped the gangplank and used it to push the boat away from the riverbank. A moment later he held the plank like a shield in front of him, just in time to ward off a shower of gravel. A fist-sized stone bounced off the Scarab’s mast and clattered into the boat. Lupus grabbed it and hurled it back with a guttural cry. The boys on the shore cringed, then looked around for more stones.
But now the wind was filling the sail and they were moving past reeds and papyrus, out into the centre of the river. Stones splashed into the water nearby, and a pair of geese rose honking from the reeds. The donkey boys ran along the bank, trying to keep up, but by now the Scarab was out of range and their stones splashed harmlessly into the Nile.
‘Did you find the treasure?’ called Nathan from the tiller. ‘Is that why they’re after you?’
‘No,’ said Flavia. ‘No treasure.’
Blood was dripping from Seth’s forehead and Jonathan was trying to staunch the flow with his sleeve.
‘Then why were they stoning you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Flavia, tearing a strip of cloth from the hem of her long tunic. ‘But they were angry at Seth.’ She handed the strip to Jonathan, who grunted his thanks.
‘Seth, what on earth did you do to make them so angry?’
Seth gave his cousin a wounded look. ‘I didn’t do anything. They were throwing rocks at me for no reason at all.’
Nathan frowned back at the donkey boys, now small figures on the retreating riverbank. Suddenly he looked at the three friends. ‘Did one of you address him by name? Did you call him “Seth” in front of them?’
Lupus nodded yes and pointed at Flavia, who was rubbing the place on her arm where the stone had hit her.
She looked up to see them all looking at her. ‘What? What did I do wrong?’
‘You frightened them,’ said Nathan, and shook his head ruefully. ‘Why Aunt Rachel chose to give you that name, I will never understand.’
‘Why?’ asked Flavia ‘What’s wrong with the name Seth?’
‘It’s a good Jewish name,’ said Jonathan.
‘But here in Egypt,’ said Nathan, ‘Seth is the red-haired god of death and destruction.’
‘The Egyptian god Seth,’ said Nathan, ‘was the brother of Osiris. Their sisters were Isis and Nephthys . . . They were the four children of the sky goddess Nut and Geb, god of the earth. Osiris married Isis and Seth married Nephthys, but Seth preferred Isis and grew jealous of his brother. He tried to kill Osiris several times. Finally he succeeded. Seth chopped up his brother and tossed the pieces in the Nile.’
‘Oh!’ cried Flavia. ‘That must be why the Seth animal stands for destruction and confusion.’
They were safely out on the river now, and although two of the bigger pyramids still loomed on the horizon, they could no longer see the angry boys on the riverbank. Jonathan had cleaned Seth’s head wound and was bandaging it with a strip of linen torn from the hem of Flavia’s tunic.
‘Osiris’s faithful wife Isis found most of the pieces,’ continued Nathan, ‘and she put him back together. And even though his most vital bit had been eaten by a sharp-nosed fish, they managed to have a son called Horus. When this son grew up, Seth persecuted him, too, and in one terrible battle young Horus lost an eye. So you see, the Egyptians regard Seth as a powerful and evil persecutor.’
‘But the name “Seth” means something completely different in Hebrew,’ said Jonathan, tying off Seth’s bandage.
‘Most Egyptians don’t know that,’ said Nathan. ‘Especially here in the countryside.’
&
nbsp; ‘That’s another reason not to leave the city,’ grumbled Seth. ‘This never happened to me in Alexandria.’
Nathan ignored him. ‘Also, red is an unlucky colour. It reminds Egyptians of the desert, and that represents death. To have red hair and be called Seth is doubly ill-omened. And if they guessed you were a Jew, you’d really be in trouble.’
‘These Egyptians are crazy,’ muttered Jonathan.
‘You should wear a turban like us, Seth!’ said Flavia.
Lupus pointed at his own turban and gave Seth a thumbs-up.
‘And change your name,’ added Jonathan.
Nathan nodded. ‘Good advice. The further upriver we travel, the worse it will get.’
‘We’re not going up river.’ Seth touched his bandaged forehead and winced. ‘We’re going back. This quest is over.’
‘No!’ cried Flavia. ‘We can’t go back to Alexandria! We have to find Nubia!’ She looked at Nathan. ‘There wasn’t any treasure, but we did find another clue. A riddle whose answer was “camel” and a hieroglyph of Sobchak, the crocodile god.’
‘Sobek,’ corrected Jonathan. ‘I think his name is Sobek.’
Lupus grunted and pointed at his wax tablet.
‘And also,’ said Flavia, glancing at what Lupus had drawn there, ‘the hieroglyph of the Seth animal.’
‘So where do we go?’ asked Nathan, frowning. ‘Seth?’
‘Nowhere,’ growled Seth. ‘I’m finished with this quest.’
‘Don’t you care about the treasure?’ asked Nathan.
‘It’s probably a trap!’ said Seth.
‘A trap?’ Nathan stared at him.
Seth nodded. ‘I’ve told you a dozen times, Chryses isn’t my friend. He’s my enemy. I’m sure he was trying to cast spells on me in Alexandria.’
‘What kind of spells?’ asked Flavia.
Seth ignored her. ‘Now he probably wants to kill me. And I wouldn’t be the first one.’
‘What kind of spells?’ repeated Flavia.
‘You’re not the first what?’ said Jonathan at the same time.
‘Remember I mentioned Onesimus?’
‘The scribe who died last month?’ said Jonathan.
Seth nodded. ‘They found his body at the foot of the stairway leading up to our cubicles. His neck was broken.’
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 228