In This Life (26 page)

The moonlight caressed David’s jaw and mouth and cheekbones, and played up his intense, green eyes. In those precious moments, I swore it was Bakari who looked up at me instead, like he’d done that night before he left for war. The war that had changed and sealed our fates forever.

“From childhood you have been everything to me,” he whispered. “Only now, more so. For all of eternity, you will be here, Shemei.”

He pressed my hand to his heart.

Four Days Later

Valley of the Nobles, Egypt

Dr. Constance Arroyo stood, hands on hips, waiting, watching, and sweating.

It was damned hot in the tomb, and probably nearing one hundred twenty degrees. It was a dark place, illuminated only by the lanterns she and her team took down with them, not to mention cramped and stuffy. Not surprising, considering the tomb had been sealed off for thousands of years with passages that could accommodate no more than two people. She swiped the sweat off her brow and rubbed her dusty, dirty shirtsleeve over her forehead, desperate for water and fresh air, but she wasn’t going to take a break now. She and her team were too close.

Three other workmen, dressed in jeans and tees and sneakers, kept at the digging, handing off baskets of sand to women who tag-teamed them up the passageway and out of the dig, and then down the hill and away from the excavation. Constance had come to this site, just off the banks of the Nile and deep within the Valley of the Nobles, about a year ago, working with another team on another excavation. On gut instinct and a stumble, she found an inconsistency in the rock formation near the previous dig that hinted of something beneath the surface. She’d kept her suspicions to herself and contacted her mentor, and then used all the money in her trust to buy her way inside, pay to keep mouths shut, purchase security, and fund her excavation.

Now, she stood moments away from the truth — a previously looted tomb or one that would etch her name in the history books. It was a moment every Egyptologist dreamed of.

Crouched over, because there was no room in this part of the excavation to stand at full height, Constance watched the workmen. If they didn’t find an entrance soon, she might have to reconsider the position of her dig. They’d been at this for far too long and with little to show for it. And then money would start running out, and her workers would no longer want to —“A door! A door!”

The worker’s voice startled Constance into action. Grabbing a lantern and a brush, she shoved her way in between and confirmed the find. It was the outline of an entrance, a sealed mud brick door and a hieroglyphic warning that certain death would rise up and destroy anyone who dared to enter.

“Break through!” Constance ordered her team in Arabic. “Carefully! Very carefully!”

She watched as the men vigilantly chiseled their way through the entry, and soon the mud brick wall gave way. Constance coughed over the debris, aimed her lantern toward the chamber just beyond, and gasped at what she saw.

Hieroglyphs and wall paintings in red and blue, black and white, yellow and brown. Chairs made of ebony and mother of pearl. A wooden chariot. Another sealed doorway on the far wall. And gold. Lots and lots of gold.

But it wasn’t the gold that captured Constance’s attention. It was the double-sized red granite sarcophagus that sat centered in the room.

“Get the crowbars!” she ordered her men. “And be careful where you walk! Nothing should be broken. Leave everything in its place for cataloguing.”

It took six men to heave the three-inch lid from the sarcophagus. Constance bit her nails, alternating between watching the workers push and shove and trying to occupy herself with the hieroglyphic messages on the walls. But she couldn’t concentrate. A sarcophagus this size was unheard of, not to mention ever found.

The lid finally gave way.

Constance gasped and fell to her knees once she saw her find of a lifetime. A double inner coffin, nearly five feet wide and six feet long, made of solid gold and inlaid with lapis, coral, and ebony. It was molded with the outline of a man and a woman — his eyes green, her eyes dark — and carved with ceremonial hieroglyphs. Their hands, she noted, were intertwined. On them, their names.

Constance read them out loud.

Bakari, General to Pharaoh.

Shemei, Royal Sister to Pharaoh.

“There is more,” one of the workers said, pointing to hieroglyphs that covered the area over General Bakari’s heart.

“Indeed, there is,” Constance said, and continued to read.

From childhood to eternity

You are everything

From this life into the next

Our second chance at life and love

“Husband and wife, perhaps,” Constance said.

She rose to her feet and started scanning the hieroglyphs, now better able to pick out the familiar references to Shemei and Bakari. She saw images of friendship and love, riches and royalty, triumph and sadness. She saw other images of another man, and glyphs hinting of a dark, sorrowful night during which Bakari was forced to use his jeweled sword.

The sword, Constance noticed, was resting against the tomb’s farthest wall beside another image of Bakari and Shemei together, with the shadow of the other man standing just behind them.

Constance shoved her hands into her pockets and evaluated the tomb, one final look-through before the tedious job of cataloguing began.

“I wonder what Shemei’s and Bakari’s story is to tell,” she said to no one in particular.

Then she grabbed her brush and notebook, determined to find it.

THE END

Terri Herman-Poncé is a communications manager by day and a storyteller by night. Born on Long Island, New York, she absolutely adores red wine, the beach, Ancient Egypt, sunrises and the New York Yankees — though not necessarily in that order. The youngest of five children, Terri lives with her husband and son on Long Island. In her next life, if she hasn’t moved on to somewhere else, Terri wants to be an astronomer. She’s fascinated with the night skies almost as much as she’s fascinated with Ancient Egypt.

Terri is a member of Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America. You can read about Terri and her stories at
http://terriponce.com
.

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