Scorpion House

by Maria Hudgins

  She found it impossible to reconcile these two sculptures with the temple paintings from Amarna. They showed a pot-bellied, rather frivolous, Nefertiti with grotesquely large hips and scrawny calves. Her husband and their six daughters also had pot bellies, huge hips and scrawny calves.

  Which was the real Nefertiti? Lacy wondered. The two sculptures of the beautiful one, both allegedly carved by an artist named Thutmose, were clearly of the same woman at different times of her life. The resemblance was so striking she could have picked them out of a line-up of hundreds if asked, “Which two are of the same woman?” But the family shown on the temple walls was not realistic. It was either a strange new art style (the assumption made by the author of that volume) or else it was an attempt to portray a whole family as looking like one of them. A freak.

  The third picture was so strange that Lacy said, “My God!” out loud when she found it. It was the so-called “sexless colossus,” a statue excavated at Karnak and showing a naked pharaoh with crook and flail but no genitalia. At first she assumed it was Akhenaten, because of the narrow head and large v-shaped lips, but according to the author it was actually Nefertiti acting in the role of pharaoh. Lacy stared at the face for a full minute. It still looked like Akhenaten to her.

  Akhenaten’s older brother would have become pharaoh if he hadn’t died before their father did. The second son assumed the throne as Amenhotep IV, but he almost immediately changed his name to Akhenaten. The important difference was in the Amen versus the Aten, because he proceeded to throw out all the old Egyptian gods. Gods of the day, the night, and the dead. Household gods and local gods. Hundreds of gods that had been revered for two thousand years. He threw them all out and elevated the Aten, the sun god, to the position of one and only god.

  Akhenaten’s chief royal wife was Nefertiti but, since she bore him only daughters, an auxiliary wife named Kiya bore him his heir, Tutankhaten, who later changed his name to Tutankhamen when he threw out his father’s god and brought back the old ones. Whew. To Lacy this sounded worse than the 2000 Presidential Election.

  Akhenaten reigned for about seventeen years and was succeeded by someone named Smenkhkare, about whom little was known. In one source Lacy read that Smenkhkare was Tut’s brother. Another source suggested he was a she, probably Nefertiti herself. There was precedent for that. Hatshepsut had reigned for twenty years, having herself portrayed as a beautiful man with both beard and breasts. Modern day examination of her mummy indicated she was actually an obese, pock-marked woman. Lacy decided not to mention this to Bay, who believed Hatshepsut had been her mother in a former life. A third source stated that Smenkhkare might have been Tut’s father and Akhenaten’s brother. Yet another, that he was the husband of Meritaten, Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s daughter, therefore Akhenaten’s son-in-law.

  At the very least, Lacy learned three things: that an incredible amount of research and speculation had been done on ancient Egypt, that much was known, and that much more was not known.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Lanier took a gin and tonic to his favorite rocking chair on the porch every afternoon about five. On this afternoon, Lacy grabbed a papaya-flavored soda from the kitchen and joined him. “Have Susan and Selim come back from town?”

  The old man squinted up at her, nodded toward a nearby chair as if granting her permission to sit. “I haven’t seen the Jeep so I guess not.” He rattled the ice in his glass. “Talked to Joan since she went home?”

  “I called her last night. She’s drinking too much.”

  “I figured.”

  “I talked to Virginia Swain. She’s going to keep an eye on her.” Lacy settled her chair in a level spot and sat. “I’m afraid Joel was the only reason she wasn’t drinking too much before. Now she’s lost him.”

  “I know what it’s like to lose your partner. I lost my wife, Cheryl, five years ago.”

  “Joel told me. It must have been hard on you.”

  Lanier looked at her, his gaze traveling up and down Lacy’s face. “Somebody poisoned her with strychnine. Do you know what it’s like to die of strychnine poisoning?”

  She shook her head and waved a fly away from her soda.

  “It’s a lot like tetanus. Lockjaw. Your muscles contract maximally. The muscles that bend your arm and the muscles that extend your arm. They both seize up.” He demonstrated, one arm held out, bent, taut, and trembling. “Working against each other. Kinda like getting a charley horse of the whole body. Your legs, your neck, your jaws, your chest. Every muscle in your body. You can’t breathe, but you’re fully aware of everything. Until the end. That’s the worst part. You don’t die until every last bit of energy is spent but you are still conscious. Until the very end.”

  “They never caught her killer?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you have any idea who it was?”

  “No.”

  Lacy saw Lanier’s eyes had teared up. She turned her own face toward hills to avoid the awkwardness. Hoping to lighten up the conversation, she said, “Do you have any children?”

  “Yes. Marcus, our son, is married, living in Seattle, and they’re expecting my first grandbaby in a couple of months. It’s a girl!”

  “Oh, congratulations!”

  “I hope it’s easier to raise a girl than a boy. For their sake, I hope it is.”

  “Marcus gave you trouble?”

  Lanier nodded.

  “I gave my parents trouble, too. Gender doesn’t matter.”

  Lanier raised his eyebrows but didn’t ask for an explanation. “I have to give Cheryl the credit for saving Marcus. She stayed on top of neighborhood doings. The kids. Little neighborhood gang, you know? You think they’re going to be all right, don’t you? Cheryl and a couple of others discovered that several neighborhood pets had gone missing …”

  Lacy’s head jerked involuntarily. “Marcus? Marcus and his friends?”

  “Mostly one friend, as it turned out, a kid who was being raised by a drug-addicted father. Old man was a real loser. Mother had walked out on them.”

  “What did you do about it?”

  “We forbade Marcus to have anything more to do with the family. All the other parents did the same. The kid was removed from the home.”

  “Did that take care of it?”

  Lanier shook his head. “Marcus was about ten at the time. Let’s don’t even talk about his teen years.” He upended his glass and shook an ice cube into his mouth. “Now, what did you do to put the grey in your parents’ hair?”

  “I had a chemistry set.”

  “And?”

  “I got hold of some picric acid and metallic salts. Blew a huge hole in the back yard. I narrowly escaped juvenile detention.”

  Lanier crunched down on his ice and grinned.

  * * *

  The burial chamber struck Lacy as a rather nice place to spend eternity. Kheti had spared no expense in furnishing it with the brightest, most expensive paints and exquisite furniture. She was going by the carved headrest left behind by ancient plunderers, the painted pottery and the dyed linen. Ultramarine, powdered lapis lazuli, imported from Afghanistan and used for the blue on both walls and pots, must have cost dearly. Bright yellow orpiment, and orange-red realgar, both arsenic compounds, must have been beyond the means of all but the wealthiest. If this was what the plunderers left behind, what had they taken?

  She sat on the chamber floor beside the coffin and studied its painted images and hieroglyphs, the gouged wood where a cartouche, presumably the cartouche of the intended occupant, had been hacked off. Who had been hated this much? And why? Damage to the face didn’t obscure the fact that it was female.

  That hole in the wall. Roxanne told them it led to the newly discovered side room the workmen were shoring up so it would be safe to enter. They had already pulled out a few items. What was it Roxanne said? Some little figurines, some papyri and a couple of canopic jars, one of which bore the cartouche of Nefertiti. What if the beautiful queen’s mummy had been spirit
ed away and hidden here? It was too much to even hope for, she thought. Lacy tried to imagine the media frenzy that would follow a discovery like that. Maybe it wouldn’t be a good thing. It would certainly put an end to their little project. What if—just what if—the coffin beside her now had actually held the mummy of Nefertiti? Softly, she touched one of the painted hands on its lid.

  Someone had left a small stepladder under the hole.

  She stood up, crossed the chamber and climbed the stepladder, careful not to touch the wall. She had to close her eyes a minute until her pupils adjusted to the dimness within. A weak shaft of light slanted down from above, through the hole workmen had cut in order to install a vent. At first she couldn’t see anything but chunks of rock and plaster. The chamber appeared to be filled with debris to within a foot or two of the top. The men had been pulling out a few basketfuls of debris every day. She studied the chunks, looking for anything with an unusual shape.

  About a foot from the hazy shaft of light, Lacy saw what looked to her like a bone—a femur, perhaps, with a knob on the end that stuck up at an angle. Could it be? She turned and gazed at the coffin behind her. The canopic jar bearing the cartouche of Nefertiti had lain in this room.

  She didn’t stop to think; she was up on her tip-toes instantly, forearms inside the hole as far as her elbows, and wriggling her torso inside. The dust raised by her wriggling choked her. She paused, turned her head for a cleaner breath, and ooched forward little by little, the rock and plaster under her clinking and crunching with every move. It looked as if rough beams had been run across the ceiling and several wooden supports now rose vertically, holding up the beams. She felt resistance as the tops of her boots caught on the edge of the opening behind her.

  Where was that thing she thought was a bone?

  Her head hit a ceiling beam and the world crumbled. Plaster, rock, dirt, splintered wood, rained down on her head and shoulders. She was trapped. The dim light she had been inching toward disappeared. She couldn’t breathe. She waited a minute, gathering courage, then yelled.

  “Help! Help!”

  The weight on her back prevented her inhaling a full breath. After calling for help twice more, she had to stop and cough. Little, weak, chuffs, from clogged airways. Could anyone possibly have heard her?

  All Lacy knew for sure was that she must remain calm. She willed her breathing to slow, her mind to banish the thought that this was it. That this was how she was going to die. The ceiling was not going to collapse any farther. It had done all it was going to do. If she could lie still until someone came to the tomb. What time of day is it? She couldn’t remember. Would someone come soon or would she be here all night? Her thoughts gradually became less cohesive, more disjointed.

  A scuffling noise filtered down from overhead.

  Lacy drew in all the air her prison would allow and called out again. And waited. And drifted off.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Hold the ladder steady, Shelley.” Graham wobbled at the knees, bent forward and touched a wall of the transverse hall with both hands. He dropped his stainless steel forceps as he reached out. They clattered to the floor.

  Shelley lunged toward the ladder and grabbed, one hand on the ladder, one on the calf of her husband’s left leg. “You’re not supposed to touch the wall.”

  He looked down at her. “Well, gee. I didn’t have much choice, did I? Would it be better if I went ahead and fell against the wall? That was my other choice.”

  “You’re not supposed to be removing anything either. If Roxanne catches you …”

  “Look, Shelley. Here’s what I’m going for.” He straightened up and pointed to a small curl of blue clinging to the ceiling near the northeast corner of the transverse hall just inside the tomb’s entrance. “Hand me those forceps.”

  Shelley did so, keeping one hand on the ladder.

  With the forceps an inch away from the blue flake, Graham paused and looked down. In a patronizing tone, he said, “I can pull this off now, or I can wait until it falls by itself. When it’s lying on the floor, I can collect it with Roxanne’s blessing, but I won’t know exactly where it came from.” He slid his feet as far apart as possible on the next-to-last step of the ladder, reached up, and tweaked the target fragment from the base plaster.

  “Shh. I heard something.” Shelley whispered. “Did you hear something?”

  “For God’s sake, Shelley. Go out and see if someone’s coming.”

  Shelley slipped out and into the glare of day.

  Graham descended the stepladder, slipped his paint fragment into a shirt pocket, folded the ladder flat and laid it on the floor near one wall. He thought he heard something, too. Pausing for a moment, he waited, heard nothing more, He looked down the long hall and into the burial chamber. From where he stood, he could see nothing but the chamber floor.

  Another sound. Tiny. Faint. This time it seemed to come from outside or above. He stepped out. He could see Shelley about thirty yards down slope, talking to Roxanne. Graham climbed around and over the tomb entrance to the area where workmen were installing the new vent. They also did their screening of material from the tomb here, so several mounds of tailings dotted a space they had shoveled flat. An 8,000-watt Briggs and Stratton generator sat idle, a few feet from the metal flue of the vent. Someone had run the generator’s power cable down through the flue.

  Graham stepped up to the flue and looked down. He heard another noise, now plainly a voice. “Help.”

  He dropped to his knees, put one ear to the vent and listened.

  “Help.”

  “Hold on! I’m coming to get you!”

  Running, stumbling, around and down to the entrance again, he shouted to Shelley, “Someone’s trapped in here! Get me some help!”

  Barreling down the long hall and into the burial chamber, Graham saw the stepladder beneath the hole in the wall. He jumped up, looked through the hole and saw the soles of two boots, turned so the toes pointed in opposite directions. He called out, “What’s holding you in?”

  A weak voice answered. “The ceiling fell on me. My shoulders and chest are …” Lacy’s voice! It was so faint he couldn’t hear the rest of her sentence.

  Graham began shoveling rocks back and out with both hands as fast as he could, flinging them over his shoulder and onto the floor behind him. One chunk, too big to maneuver with one hand, he yanked out with both, jamming his knee against the wall as a fulcrum.

  Two workmen appeared behind him and tugged on his shirttail. “Sir? Sir?”

  Graham knew it was useless to explain more than the basic situation to these men who spoke little English. He was able, now, to see in far enough to see a slanted wood beam between him and the small shaft of light from the vent. The beam was pinning Lacy down. He had to go in after her, but he couldn’t explain that to the workmen. “Dr. Glass. Her feet,” he said, pointing to the boot bottoms. “I’m going in. When I say, ‘Pull,’ you pull.” Demonstrating with his hands, he grabbed the arm of one man who reached out toward one boot. “Not yet. Not yet. When I say ‘Pull.’ Got it?”

  He heaved himself up and into the hole, ignoring the high-pitched protests of the men behind him. He found barely enough room to inch forward, parallel to Lacy’s body. Shoving cobbles and chunks of plaster aside, he talked to Lacy as calmly as he could. “Don’t move, Lacy. I’m right beside you.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Graham, Lacy. Do you think you have any broken bones?”

  “I can’t tell. I don’t think so.”

  When his shoulders were almost even with hers, he got a better look at the beam. Lacy was pinned by more than the beam. Large slabs of ceiling lay at crazy angles on the beam, on Lacy’s head and back. “Look, Lacy. There are some guys behind you and I’m going to tell them to pull on your feet when I lift this beam off you.”

  “You can’t. The whole ceiling may fall.”

  “We have to take that chance, but first, wiggle your legs if you can. Do either of
them feel like they’re broken?”

  Silence for a few seconds, then, “I don’t think so.”

  “Right. Here goes.” Graham slid his arms around in front of him until both elbows were resting on something firm. Turning his hands, palms up, he placed them under the slanted beam. Flexing his biceps and pushing up, he called back to the men, “Pull!”

  Lacy screamed, but went nowhere. The beam had barely budged, but Graham’s effort caused more ceiling to rain down on both their heads.

  “Did the men pull on your legs?”

  “Yes, but I’m still stuck.”

  “Let’s try again.” Graham tensed his whole body and heaved up on the beam with all his strength. An avalanche of dirt, rubble and rocks rained down on his head. “Pull!” He heard the beam creak, felt it rise, and felt Lacy’s body slip out as if through a birth canal. A minute later the men yanked him out as well.

  Lacy sat curled up on the chamber floor, her head on her knees.

  Graham slid over to her, pulled her to him, looked down at her dirt-caked face. A streak of blood ran across her chin. Tears washed tracks through the dirt on her cheeks. He didn’t mean to, and he didn’t think she meant to either, but the next moment they were kissing. Three kisses, four—maybe five. He pulled away and she turned her head.

  “We don’t want to do this,” he said.

  Lacy nodded.

  * * *

  If convincing Susan she and Lanier weren’t lying about the papyrus juice had been all that important, they’d have taped her up with soggy blotting paper on both arms and both legs. However, given the number of scrapes she sported after being pulled from the new chamber, Lacy opted for a good shower followed by copious amounts of Horace’s special unguent made of linseed, sycamore leaves and honey.

  Graham hadn’t been as lucky. His push on the fallen beam had broken his left thumb. He and Shelley took off for the hospital in Luxor, the same hospital where Joel Friedman’s body had lain not so long ago. Again, hospital staff called Dr. Dave Chovan, the ex-pat Texan, to help with translation. Chovan explained to Graham how he was to care for his thumb.