Shouting from over to our right sounded alarmingly close. Some of our pursuers were on horseback and riding in such a way as to cut us off in less than a minute.
“Douse the flame!” I shouted at Nysa. “They can see us.”
Nysa didn’t speak Swedish so I repeated the demand in English, louder and more slowly. She must’ve picked up my meaning somehow and threw the torch in a great arc. It disappeared beyond a low dune behind us. The thrumming of horse-hooves on sand drew closer. Håkan flicked the reins and shouted the Swedish version of giddy-up. Once more I banged into the struts behind me, nearly losing my balance entirely. When I righted myself, the robe-wearing horse riders were closing in on us like the wraiths of some ancient Klu Klux Klan posse. The flames in front appeared without preamble or warning, illuminating two great doors at the end of a long slope descending gradually ahead of us. They stood partially open.
We approached down the sandy roadway. High banks of sand rose on either side. Håkan pulled sharply on the reins, slowing the horses right down. He put a finger to his lips. The riders appeared above us with their horses scuffling and skittering. As we passed quietly below them they looked for us in vain.
“Where’ve they gone?”
“One moment they were just ahead and then they vanished.”
“Did they fall into this wadi?”
“Where did this gully come from? I’ve never seen it before.”
“Perhaps an old tomb has caved in.”
“Might be treasure. We’ll come back in the morning. If they tumbled down there they won’t get out.”
We slipped between the doors and left them to their speculation.
Hall of Records
The hallway we entered had a floor that continued to slope down. More torches just inside the doorway gave enough light for us to make our way steadily forward. The walls on either side of us carried no decoration except for occasional panels of hieroglyphic writing. Ahead of us a soft glow revealed two pillars bearing a crosspiece, set across the breadth of the wide passageway.
“Where are we?”
“We’re in the Hall of Records,” Håkan responded softly in Swedish. Our lowered voices still echoed around the huge room we were entering. Its walls emanated a glow that gave ample illumination. Håkan had a bad cut on his face. Nysa nursed her wrist and rubbed a deep bruise on her forearm.
‘What happened to your face?’ Nysa looked over at me.
‘I don’t know.’ I touched my cheek and it stung.
‘You’re all grazed.’
I remembered careering into Victoria, or at least into some version of Victoria, and the sensation of being dragged past multiple frozen thorns.
‘You can leave the cart here.’
Two bald-headed men stood over to one side of the room, near a doorway, with a winged sun painted above. They were identical in every way, from their merry faces to their priestly clothing. Their ears protruded from almost completely spherical faces.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice booming around the chamber as though I’d spoken through a loud hailer.
Both men flapped their hands at me, shaking their heads and apparently wiggling their ears all at the same time.
‘We can talk quite nicely like this.’
‘We invite you to do so too.’
‘Better for our nerves.’
I’d no idea which twin had said what, but nodded and just managed to avoid saying, “I’m sorry,” out loud.
‘Apology accepted.’
‘Gratefully.’
‘We don’t have much time.’
The twin on the right turned to his brother and smiled, nodding.
‘But we have to hurry.’
‘What we mean is that you don’t have much time.’
‘We have all the time in the universe.’
A sensation like fizzy water going up my nose happened instead somewhere inside my chest. They were giggling. Håkan and Nysa joined them. We all grinned at each other like something delightfully funny had happened. Which in a way it had.
‘Come.’ This came from the twin on the left, who led us into the room behind him. ‘There’s someone you must all meet.’
This room had relief carvings all around, some picked out in colour. They were arranged in distinct panels, exquisite in their delicacy and fine detail. The closer I looked the more detail I could see. Although the style had every appearance of being Egyptian, the clothing did not. One panel showed a group of people on skis; another revealed reindeer. Further on, a girl stood in front of a bull with a sun between its horns. I studied her face.
‘Nysa!’
Nysa crossed the room as though I’d shouted at her. She peered at the wall and then half-frowned and half-smiled.
‘It’s me. How we rescued the books is recorded over there. And Håkan and the firebrands in the tomb or whatever it was, is shown there.’ She pointed to the wall to our right.
‘But look.’ She took my hand and led me to the far wall opposite the entrance. Here, to one side of a further doorway, a fresco showed a circular building, where the roof stood supported by statues of Greek goddesses. Walking towards it were two figures, shown only in profile. One, slightly taller, could only be me, and the other, shorter with broader shoulders, quite clearly revealed Håkan.
‘But that hasn’t happened,’ I thought.
‘No,’ thought Nysa, ‘but I know exactly where that palladium is in Alexandria.’
Håkan, who had entered the next room, stuck his head back out and looked at us.
‘Someone wants to meet you.’
We entered. In the middle of the room, a little bit behind Håkan, a girl stood with her dark hair beaded and falling to her shoulders. Over to the left, a woman with iron-grey hair sat on a rather grand armchair made of carved wood. The girl spoke inside our minds.
‘We have long awaited this moment. Welcome, my brothers and sister.’ She opened her arms. ‘Welcome back, Red King and High-Born Son. And to you who bring a New Beginning –’ she nodded to Nysa – ‘a special welcome.’
Shoshan, the Egyptian priestess I’d first seen reflected in the cabinet glass in the British Museum, walked over to Nysa and held both her hands. Then they embraced.
Tears streamed down Nysa’s face.
‘I’ve always known you. Always.’
‘And I you,’ responded Shoshan. ‘We just had to remember.’
Shoshan came over to me and laid her hand on my shoulder. We held each other’s gaze. Her features remained those of the young teenager I remembered, but her eyes, in the soft light that flowed around us, appeared beyond age and deep beyond measurement. She nodded and smiled, and looked thirteen once again.
‘Red King, you saved me once, and now you’ve served our blessed Order again with your journey, bringing these priceless treasures to this sanctuary. We will meet once more before this adventure is complete. Now I must greet my new brother and you must take what little time remains with someone who has waited long for this moment.’
She gently pushed me towards the seated lady, and crossed over to speak with Håkan. The woman wore a simple saffron-coloured robe, gathered above her waist. She beckoned me to a second chair, next to her own. The feet of this chair were formed from tiny carved lion’s paws. I sat and turned to the woman. For a moment she remained a stranger, a woman of middle years with some grey in her hair, handsome and with penetrating but kind eyes. Then she became Great Aunt Bridget. Her features fuddled and dissolved into fogginess as my eyes filled with tears. She took my hands.
‘I’m so proud of you, Rhory. What the three of you have accomplished is no small thing. You have played your part to the full and I’m pleased I am able to be here to welcome you at the end, well, nearly the end of this venture.’
I took back one hand and wiped the tears from my eyes.
‘Does this mean…?’ My thoughts trailed off. I didn’t know how to give my question the right words.
‘Does this mean I’m not dead? Bridge
t said inwardly. The much younger Bridget than the aunt I’d seen shortly before she died in hospital, smiled.
‘We never really die, Rhory. All births and deaths are stepping through a new doorway. Our Nysa’s name means New Beginning and that’s there at every great change. We go on, adopting first this form and then that, always following our chosen destiny, sometimes well, sometimes less well, but doing what only we can do.’
She put her hands up to my face.
‘You saw a vision of how things could be if you and the other Life Seeds had ignored the inner prompting that brought you here. For there are consequences that reach to the very end of time, for all we choose to do or not do. But you acted with courage, even if you took a cold bath in the process.’
I remembered my involuntary exploration of the water beneath the frozen lake in Sweden. We talked for a bit more. She seemed to know about Dad, Mum and Juliette, but wanted to hear my version. She asked me about meeting Paracelsus and the Sami sisters. For some time we sat in stillness. She squeezed my hands.
‘Now you must go. For time passes even while we talk in this space slightly outside time.’
She stood and pointed me towards a painting on the wall behind her chair. One of the wiggly-eared twins pressed on the fresco of a boat travelling down a stylised river; the stone wall pivoted. It opened onto a dimly lit tunnel. The priest beckoned and with me leading the way, Håkan, Nysa and I entered.
Nile Cruise
I eased the soft flesh off a small ripe apricot, using my teeth to extract the pit. I’d become pretty good at this over the last two days. Apricot juice filled my mouth. With considerable skill, I expelled the stone with a whoosh and it hit the rail of the barge, before cannoning into the fast flowing river. I awarded myself ten points and reached for another fruit.
I settled back into the soft cushions of the sofa and contemplated the cook at the end of the Governor’s barge beginning preparations for lunch. This was truly the Life of Riley, whoever Riley might be. Last night we’d slept in a palace, the night before in a marquee fit for a pharaoh. On the shore, villagers lined up to watch us go past. They neither waved nor jeered, but stood utterly still as the barge soared by, propelled by the current and the ten oarsmen.
Anastasia, standing on the starboard side (or maybe the port), anyway the side on the right looking forward, called out in her own language. The image of the crocodile in Peter Pan came unbidden to my mind. I eased my way out of my comfort zone and crossed to join her and Nysa at the rail. About fifty metres away a crocodile could be seen lazily swimming down the river. Its tail flipped the water and it had to be at least three metres long. The captain, standing near the front of our craft, where the golden prow rose in curving grandeur, laughed and made jaw-gnashing movements with both his arms, in a passable imitation of a croc eating a schoolboy. I leaned a little over the side, enjoying the manner in which the yellowish water swirled its muddy way past us. The outside of the barge had been painted in yellow and blue designs that matched the canopies, the sail and the storage room at the back of our boat. The steersman, dressed with just enough cotton cloth to be decent, skilfully deployed the great paddle. Our cook, squatting in front of him, put more chicken bits on sticks, on to roast. Yummy.
The wind rustled my hair and I touched my swollen cheek. Brushing against vile Victoria had not been good news for me. My cheek had come up with a welt that stung slightly all the time.
Once we’d left the Hall of Records we emerged through a nondescript cleft in the rocks in sight of the Nile. Angelos sat on a convenient rock with a tiny oil lamp casting enough light for us to find our way to him. When I looked back I could see the craggy hillside and a few stunted palm trees, but I could no longer make out the gap we’d just passed through. He held his fingers to his lips and pointed to a track leading towards the great river. We followed it down. My legs and arms and head ached and I couldn’t believe my eyes when, approaching the riverbank, we saw a huge barge drawn up at a small jetty.
Hypatia had arranged through her friend and student, the Governor of Alexandria, to have his barge waiting for us. Goodness only knows what explanation she’d offered him, but grubby, with torn clothes, and looking like the escaped slaves we were, we were greeted by the captain as passing royalty. For most of the first day we all crashed out under the blue and gold canopy, snuggling into the padded seats and sleeping the day away. That night we stopped just outside a small village on the eastern bank, and found a huge marquee kept there for when the Governor wanted to get away from it all. The girls even slept in the Governor’s bed! Håkan and I bathed in scented water, dried ourselves with the softest towels this side of Harrods, and dressed like minor pashas in the silky clothes provided. We entered the Riley period.
With ears all around us, however in awe of who they’d been told we were, we didn’t share our thoughts on what had happened until we reached the palace the following evening. Built entirely of wood, it stood next to a small damaged stone temple. We spent the late afternoon in even greater luxury, in rooms with exquisite paintings on the walls and wonderful views over the gardens. Later, Nysa, Håkan and I sat together in the back garden enjoying the fragrance of the plants and the spectacular sunset over the Nile. Anastasia and Devorah were playing a board game with Angelos.
‘Did Angelos betray us?’ (Me)
‘No. I don’t think so. Leaving us like that had been planned.’ (Nysa)
‘Been nice if we’d been told.’ (Me)
‘Would it have helped to know we were the planned human sacrifice?’ (Håkan)
We all pondered on that one.
‘I’m not sure they were going to sacrifice us, just use us and our connection with time to get back the person they had lost.’ (Me)
I told again the story of how the Greek boy Dimitris, along with Shoshan and I, had travelled back in time and thwarted some awful ritual that a tall longhaired priest and the redheaded Green Brooch Lady had planned. The longhaired man had been stuck back in that past. Or at least that’s what I guessed. Green Brooch Lady had not, because I didn’t think she’d ever been completely there.
‘Like this time. The two women at the front of the procession, they weren’t quite real … sort of icy projections or something. I think that’s why my cheek has gone all funny.’
Nysa bit her lip and then giggled.
‘Well you do look funny with that bandage going all round your head.’
I had a poultice on my cheek held on by a bandage. It gave some relief and had been prepared by the housekeeper in the palace.
We congratulated Håkan once more on his remarkable gymnastic skills. He shrugged with some modesty and went off to watch Anastasia playing.
‘Do you think we have finished our task now?’
‘It looks like it.’
‘I wonder how Håkan and I will get back to … to our homes.’
“I think Hypatia will have a way to help. She has this remarkable shape, a mathematical knot. She calls it the Time Knot, as it somehow resembles the way time flows in spirals. We brought you here safely using that with sunlight projected through it. Now the Knot is in Devorah’s home, in that big room.’
I remembered the shape we’d seen shrouded in cloth. I nodded, not totally convinced, but calm enough that we would get back … somehow.
Up in Flames
Håkan nudged me out of my daydreaming.
“Look. A boat is approaching and I think that’s Myrna aboard.”
A small craft had left the western shore and followed a collision course with us. A woman, looking very much like Myrna (or indeed my one-time friend Shelley) stood in the prow. The captain shouted an order and our oarsmen stopped rowing. He shouted again and two of the oarsmen quickly took down the yellow and blue sail. Their colleagues did something clever with their oars so we became motionless with the river racing by.
Myrna came on board. The captain watched with increasing puzzlement as she sat with Nysa, holding her hand, and looking into her eyes in
complete silence. Nysa stood. She spoke rapidly to Angelos and the other two girls. I only caught odd images of rampaging crowds and a surreal inner picture of the black twins looking at me through binoculars.
‘We must now travel separately.’ Nysa indicated. ‘Somehow, Simoneas and his companions returned to Alexandria before us. Maybe they travelled through the night while we slept. Anyway, they’ve persuaded one of the bishops to arrest us on our return. They know we are on this barge. But Myrna and Hypatia have arranged a way to thwart them.’
Nysa explained the plan to us as the captain and crew watched in bafflement at three kids standing staring at each other in total silence, with all sorts of emotions playing over their faces. One or two of the crew clutched at amulets hanging from their throats, others made strange hand signals.
After brief farewells, with Anastasia brusquely wiping away a tear as she shook Håkan’s hand, Nysa, Håkan and I stepped down into Myrna’s boat. I slipped and fell knees first into an inch of bilge water. My Life-of-Riley days were officially concluded.
We sailed with a lot of other small craft carrying fruit piled high, into a canal that gave off one of the numerous arms of the lotus flower delta of the Nile. This led to a huge freshwater lake called Mareotis. It sat just south of Alexandria. We could see the Governor’s barge way off to the east, on the same lake. It would come closer to land and then anchor while still offshore, making it hard for even a bishop to arrest anyone. That would give Nysa, Håkan and me a chance to slip into the Mediterranean Sea unnoticed, using another canal. By the time said bishop realised we were not there we would have landed at Nysa’s father’s wharf. Soon after, we planned to be safe in Maimonides’s house, or better still in my case, back in Hammerford.
Time Knot Page 35