“What’s my share?” said Annie thickly.
“Please let me pay. I’m getting a kick out of this. I love that we’re both Lockwoods.”
RENIFER:
IN THE TWENTIETH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF KHUFU, LORD OF THE TWO LANDS
The great torches along the polished causeway had been lit. The avenue past the temples and up to the Pyramid gleamed in the night. The wind off the desert grew cold.
The tomb robbers held no grudge against Hetepheres. They hoped she would have eternal life. They assumed, however, that she would be fine without her jewels.
They had been robbing her tomb for several nights now, having chipped away the plaster that hid the entrance. Her little mortuary chapel had potted palms and ferns, watered by temple servants. Now there were many more, watered by tomb robbers, which after their night’s work, the thieves slid over the stones to hide the forced entry.
They had taken from the tomb most of the smaller items and were now considering how to take the larger ones.
Using levers, they tipped up the lid of the great stone sarcophagus. In it would rest the finest jewels, lying next to and on top of the mummy. The queen’s ka would be flying around, frantic and angry, but they had been robbing tombs for generations. No man yet had been hurt by a ka—only by priests who thought they were above bribery.
It took some time to maneuver the two-ton stone lid out of the way. They balanced it crosswise on the rim of the sarcophagus and hoisted out the light wooden coffin. They removed an immense gold pectoral of vulture’s wings, solid with jasper and lapis lazuli. Somebody’s wife or daughter would look magnificent in the morning.
Of course, she would have to look magnificent in private, until the gold was melted down and molded into something that could not be recognized. But melting down stolen gold was a daily activity, like baking bread or netting fish.
If Pharaoh caught them, He would have them impaled. But the robbers merely found this exciting. They did not expect Pharaoh to be told. Sufficient bribes had been paid for many nights of privacy. The guardians of the City of the Dead were always happy to receive gold. The priests who served the dead queen her daily meals were also satisfied by gold.
That was the thing about gold. Everybody wanted it and everybody was satisfied by it.
Except when they wanted more.
ANNIE: 1999
The third falling was hideous and wrong.
Even as it was happening, Annie knew that only bad things could come of this. She would suffer—and worse, she would cause others to suffer.
She saw the boy’s eyes open wide, saw his puzzlement.
She tried to call to him, but Time peeled them apart.
Decades ripped at her hair and years tore her skin. She gained velocity. Passing years heaved around her like earthquakes. Annie was screaming, but her voice was torn from her throat by the wind of Time. Her fingertips scraped along centuries, her body bruised by millennia.
Stop, begged Annie. You’re taking me too far. If Strat is out there, he’s in 1899.
But she was merely mortal and had no weapons.
Time possessed them all.
HIRAM STRATTON, SR.: 1899
“Ah, Mr. Stratton,” said the museum trustee, “such a delight to lunch with you.”
Actually, he found Hiram Stratton appalling. The man had grown so obese from fine food and liquor that his belly jutted into a room like the prow of a tugboat. The immense mustache was groomed and waxed, the teeth yellow from nicotine, and the pipe clenched in the jaw gave off a noxious odor. The eyes were too small for the lumpy face, and blinked too seldom, as with a shark. Below the small beard, the starched white collar was crushed by the weight of jowls and chin.
The museum had opened an American Wing, which embarrassed the trustee, since Americans were not capable of producing art. The museum should contain only actual art—Italian oil paintings or Greek statues. Perhaps Mr. Stratton had been coaxed into believing in the existence of American art.
No doubt the man wanted his name on a plaque or a door. The trustee shuddered to think of his beloved museum stained by the name of this family. Must I have anything to do with this revolting person? thought the trustee, resenting his assignment.
“I am thinking,” said Hiram Stratton, Sr., “of giving several million dollars to the Egyptian collection.”
The trustee was passionate about the Egyptian collection. He loved pyramids and the Nile, papyrus and tombs. He found he didn’t care as much about the Stratton name as he had a moment ago. “Archaeology is expensive, dear sir. One must have quite a staff. We, of course, sponsor Dr. Archibald Lightner, who even now is working at the foot of the Great Pyramid. Naturally you have read his gripping books.”
Personally the trustee didn’t think Mr. Stratton could read. But the man could count. Millions at a time. What that money could do for the Egyptian collection!
And it was imperative to remove antiquities from Egypt swiftly, because the country was making noises about wanting to keep them for itself! Absurd. To think of leaving such treasures with mere Egyptians!
“I wish,” said Mr. Stratton, “to visit the excavation prior to making my gift.”
The trustee imagined Mr. Stratton flattening little Egyptian donkeys. “How thrilled Dr. Lightner will be to have a man of your stature visit,” he lied.
Mr. Stratton had a peculiar request. He did not wish his name used. Dr. Archibald Lightner was merely to know that an important donor was arriving. In fact, Hiram Stratton would arrange his visit through another group entirely. “My dear sir,” said the trustee, confused, for there was but one reason to give money—to be applauded by one’s friends—“surely you want your name in the papers.”
“When one has wealth, one is forced to take precautions,” said Hiram Stratton.
In other words, thought the trustee, the factory fire haunts you. Somebody out there would like to cut you to pieces. “It is a sorrowful world,” he said, “when gentlemen such as yourself must deal with an ungrateful public.”
CAMILLA: 1899
Camilla was astonished to find that Egypt was overrun by tourists.
She met hunters eager to bag a crocodile, collectors of mummies, explorers of rivers and invalids in sedan chairs hoping to bake themselves healthy. Hordes of British officers were exploring Cairo and Giza and Saqqara before joining the attack at Khartoum.
Camilla pretended that a handsome British officer—no, a titled handsome British officer—would fall in love with her and beg for her hand in marriage.
But the British were even shorter than the Americans. Camilla towered over every man in sight.
She had come as a newspaperwoman, Duffie having obtained a fake assignment for Miss Camilla Matthews. Camilla, with a mass of other tourists, approached the Pyramids. The donkey she rode was small and plump and hung with tassels. She had to hold her feet up so they did not scrape the ground.
Nothing had prepared her for the sight of the Pyramids.
She knew there were two million two-ton rocks in Khufu’s Pyramid, but to see them! To gaze up and up and up, stunned by the actual accumulation of all those stones, and each its own color of gold; the Egyptian sun beating down until every angle and corner burned with fire.
Oh, thought Camilla, to have known the man—or god—who thought to build this monument.
The Pyramid was clustered with climbers: two or three natives in billowing white robes vaulting easily from stone to stone, and then reaching out long brown hands to haul up an exhausted and sweating tourist. In every language came their cries of encouragement: “Allez-y doucement!” “Dem halben-weg!” “Pazienza, signora!”
The wind lifted sand and flung it in her face, leaving her skin raw and stung. Just so had Camilla flung lies at Katie. Camilla felt as sick in her gut as if she had been drinking from the Nile. Far worse, she had drunk from the example of Hiram Stratton.
She, Camilla Mateusz, had trespassed on a saint.
Life had already used Katie
so badly. What right had Camilla to use her?
I had to! Camilla told herself. It was necessary to find the son, and through the son punish the father! I must shrug about it.
But she knew herself to be infected, from her rage toward the father and her daily practice of lying and cheating and conniving for Mr. Duffie.
Camilla strode on. The walking was difficult. The Giza plateau was nothing but sand and stone broken by centuries of weather and feet and by decades of excavation. Her chestnut leather boots were scratched by shards and rubble. Fine clothing was a good thing, but better was a clean heart, she thought.
Quarrying had taken place everywhere, giving the plateau an odd geometry, with so many squares cut away over the millennia. The passage of so much time allowed Camilla to shrug. Who cared about a clean heart? She cared about money, and if it was dirty, so be it. It would still feed her brothers and sisters.
Several hundred feet beyond the Pyramids and the Sphinx was a tent city: headquarters of Dr. Lightner’s dig. Fenced off by posts and a single frayed rope, it was guarded by an Egyptian in a long swirling robe of chocolate brown. He was armed—a rifle on his shoulder, a pistol at his waist and a knife literally in his teeth. Camilla loved him. He was treasure and greed, adventure and attack.
Her letter of introduction to Dr. Archibald Lightner—her false letter, designed by Hiram Stratton himself—moved Camilla past the barricade.
The great man sat under an awning and behind a table littered with shards of rock and pottery. He looked at her with dislike, read the letter and sighed. “Miss Matthews, I prefer not to deal with females. Their educations are poor and their presence distracting.”
Camilla, whose education was indeed poor, and who planned to be a major distraction, could not argue.
In spite of his opinion of females, however, Archibald Lightner obeyed the rules of courtesy and got to his feet. And now the word great was appropriate. Archibald Lightner was six-and-a-half-feet tall.
Camilla made an instant decision to marry him.
Plenty of women married for money. It couldn’t be worse to choose a husband by height. Of course, age was a problem. He had to be twenty years older than Camilla. Possibly thirty. But who cared? He was taller. “I have never been accused of being low to the ground, sir. And I shall not be a nuisance. I shall be the best publicity you can buy. My article will generate large donations. An archaeologist can never have too much money.”
Dr. Lightner laughed. It was a rusty sound, as one who rarely encounters anything comic. Making him laugh was how she would accomplish his proposal of marriage. Camilla gave herself a deadline, as if he were a newspaper article. Three weeks, she said to herself, and he will ask for my hand. She looked up into his eyes: the first time in her life that a man’s eyes were above her own.
“Miss Matthews,” he said reluctantly, “how may I begin your instruction?”
She pointed to the Pyramids. “I want desperately to ascend. I spent the voyage reading about Egypt and have yearned for this moment. Must I hire assistance like other tourists? I am strong and accustomed to playing ball games. Might I climb alone?”
He was puzzled, as if she were a hieroglyph not yet deciphered. “No, madam. A lady mustn’t attempt the ascent alone. She might grow fatigued from heat or lose her balance and topple.”
Camilla had never lost her balance and toppled; not when her father died; not when she masqueraded as a man; not when she visited a leper hospital. She did not plan to topple from a Pyramid either. But women did not contradict great men, nor receive marriage proposals by being strong.
“I will take you,” he said suddenly, surprising her; perhaps surprising himself; definitely surprising his staff, who took a second glance at the female in their midst.
They approached the base of the Pyramid. Camilla touched one of the great yellowing stones. She swayed from the impact of such antiquity. She felt she almost knew the men who had piled these stones. Knew their wives and children, their gods and dreams.
“Are you faint already?” demanded the great man irritably.
“I am overcome not by heat, but by history. Not by weakness, but by strength.” Camilla caught Dr. Lightner’s arm. “Tell me how the stones were quarried and moved. Tell me who was here. Tell me how they lived.”
He stared at her as if she were an artifact. “Put your hat back on,” he said gruffly. “Fasten the scarf. You must be shaded from the glare.” He tightened the chin strap on his own stiff, wide-brimmed hat and took her hand to help her up. She did need help, as her skirt proved confining. Dr. Lightner could vault easily up to the next level, from whence he would reach down to grip her hand, and lean backward. Up the tautness of his body she would scramble. She felt her arm would be pulled from its socket with every yank. She bruised her shin and banged her elbow, but gave no sign, unwilling to ask for rest.
“From the top, Miss Matthews, you will see for miles because the land is flat and the air so clear. You will comprehend this area as one vast graveyard. You will see the floor plan, so to speak: the causeway, the quadrangles of lesser tombs and the remains of minor pyramids.”
Twice he dusted her off, apologizing for the intimacy of this act. Once Camilla dusted him off. She was thorough. She did not apologize.
“Tell me,” said Dr. Lightner. “What reading did you do to prepare for this article you will write about me?”
“I began of course with your own three books,” said Camilla, having purchased them from American tourists who didn’t care if they ever heard another word about Egypt again. “My favorite is volume two, in which you discourse about the current events in Egypt as compared to the upheavals of Egypt’s magnificent past.”
He said casually, as one to whom the topic is of minor interest, “I am preparing volume four.”
“Dr. Lightner! What an honor it would be were I permitted to gaze at your first draft.”
They reached the summit. Two or three stones of the final tier remained, creating shade and seating. It might have been designed for tired ladies and handsome men to rest and eat an orange. Dr. Lightner had a tin canteen hanging at his waist, and they shared sips of water. Her lips rested where his had been and now when their eyes met, his dropped first.
In the distance was Cairo with minarets and towers. Closer were farms of emerald green, split by canals, dotted with camels and donkeys moving down dusty lanes.
Peace descended over Camilla.
It was not possible to think of revenge and rage. Perhaps rage and revenge had once occurred in Egypt, but today it was serene and Camilla was part of the eternally repeating life of that eternal river.
“This is the stage of a great theater, isn’t it?” Camilla said softly. “Cairo is the audience. A million people are crammed into the auditorium that is Egypt.”
“How beautifully you expressed that.” Dr. Lightner pointed to a line as sharp as an edge of paper that divided the green fields from the yellow desert. “Look there. Fields and sand are not friends,” he told her. “They march up to each other and neither will surrender. That sand extends from the Nile to Morocco! To the Atlantic Ocean itself.”
“I should like to travel from oasis to oasis with my camel train,” said Camilla, “and meet the Bedouin.”
“Yes! And write an article about it! I will help you arrange it.” He took her hand for a different purpose than hauling her upward. He took it, she thought, from excitement. From looking forward to her company. He held her hand flat between both of his, as in Egyptian wall paintings.
An emotion as ageless as revenge entered Camilla’s heart. She knew suddenly what could cause a lady to lose her balance and topple.
Falling in love.
STRAT: 1899
Twice that day, Strat felt the presence of Annie. Twice he reached into thin air, thinking to grasp her and haul her through to him. Twice he caught only the wind.
She is near, he thought, but a year or a century divides us.
He could have wept or screamed or even
thrown himself off the Pyramid, but he managed to laugh and go on taking photographs of tourists and saving the money to send to Katie.
The third time he so intensely felt the presence of Annie, he lost his grip on the heavy wooden tripod that held his camera. It tipped to the side, falling heavily against a pile of stones. Oh, no! If his camera were broken …
Strat’s heart sank.
But what was damaged was the stone.
Impossible. A stick of wood could not break stone. Strat kicked the stone with his boot—and it broke. He picked up a piece and rubbed it—and it turned to white dust in his palm.
It was plaster.
Who would apply plaster to a stone in the desert?
Strat opened his penknife and stabbed experimentally at the stones around him. He was surrounded by plaster. He, Strat, was standing on the entrance to a tomb. Some royal tomb had been camouflaged by that plaster for thousands of years, and he—not the brilliant archaeologists! not the scholars! not the historians!—he, Strat, had found it.
I’ll be famous. I, Hiram Stratton, Jr.—
—but he did not want anyone else knowing he was Hiram Stratton, Jr. Already he felt vulnerable and anxious, because Archibald Lightner knew the truth. What if word spread?
Father, thought Strat ruefully, you have truly followed me to the grave. Luckily, it isn’t my grave. And though I dare not take credit, for publicity would tell you where I am, at least I can take photographs.
He could not wait to tell Dr. Lightner. He ran across the sand and rubble to the dig and saw, several hundred yards away, Dr. Lightner talking with a tall slim girl in a long romantic skirt.
Annie had come.
The other night when he climbed to the top of the Pyramid, he had reached her. Time had let his prayer cross the century.
His body leaped forward and his heart followed. He soared toward her, as an eagle soars on rising heat. He plunged over the crevasse where some archaeologist was digging in the hope of finding a buried tomb ship. He raced over trenches where yet another hoped to find a queen’s tomb. He could not slow his steps and he certainly could not slow his heart.
The Time Travelers: Volume Two Page 18