The Buried Pyramid (65 page)

“Not,” Neville said, “if you intend to pass judgment on us.”

“It is my duty to judge those who come before me,” Neferankhotep said, and Thoth nodded solemn agreement.

“Very well,” Neville said. “Judge me and me alone. I am the one who led this expedition. I am the one who desired to find you—or rather your resting place. I am the one who hoped to benefit through my discoveries. The others acted only in accord with what I had already set in motion.”

Neferankhotep was about to reply when Lady Cheshire interrupted, speaking over half-voiced protests from the others.

“Nonsense, Sir Neville. What you say may be true enough of your niece, Mr. Bryce, and Mr. Holmboe, but I am responsible for my own part in this. Captain Brentworth met his death through his fidelity to me. Sarah and Rashid are little more than servants. If you will be judged for your people, allow me, at least to assume the weight of guilt for my own.”

Audrey’s words could have been spoken from mere bravado and pride, but nonetheless Neville thought her magnificent, with her green eyes flashing and her shoulders thrown back, straight and valiant as any soldier.

“Guilt, Audrey?” said Neferankhotep. “So you admit to being guilty?”

“I admit to some guilt,” Lady Cheshire replied, “though not toward you and your tomb. I agree with Sir Neville. We sought an archeological find, not a holy place. However, I do admit to having deceived Sir Neville, to having been less direct than I might have been, and to having hired dangerous men as a means of gaining my goals. Yes. I admit my guilt in these matters.”

“Though only,” Neferankhotep said, his dry assessment removing the glory from her defiant speech, “after being discovered and yourself deceived. Judgment will not be deferred, nor blame accepted for the actions of another. None of you who stand here came less than willingly.”

“What about Rashid?” Jenny interrupted fiercely. “He’s just a servant—almost a slave. He didn’t have any choice.”

Neville felt a surge of pride for his niece. She made no excuses for herself, but though her pale cheeks testified to her shock, she persisted in defending others.

Neferankhotep was less impressed, “And so you know the hearts and minds of men, even of a youth who cannot speak a word? You seem prepared to set yourself in the place reserved for gods. I speak only the truth, for I am vindicated and stand as and with Osiris. There is not one among your company who did not, for whatever personal reasons, join in this expedition of his own free will.”

Stephen stepped forward, bowed to Neferankhotep and spoke, his tones pedantic, “Great king, you say that none can escape judgment. However, on what terms is this judgment to be made? None of us were educated in the religion and mores of ancient Egypt. Judging us on those terms would be entirely unfair.”

“That’s right,” Jenny added. “We’re not even all of the same faith. I was raised Catholic like my papa. I think the English are all Anglican, which is the same, but different. Eddie’s a convert to Islam, and Rashid . . .”

The Egyptian youth gestured toward Eddie, claiming him as a coreligionist.

“So you see,” Jenny finished triumphantly. “We’re not even the same as each other.”

“Perhaps the laws of ancient Egypt would not be as unfair or unfamiliar as you think,” Neferankhotep said. “Consider the Ten Commandments as written in the Bible, a book I believe all of you—for all your other religious differences—consider revelatory of the will of your deity. Compare those commandments to the most basic elements of our own catechism—what your scholars have termed the Negative Confessions.”

“The Negative Confessions?” Stephen said. “I believe I am familiar with the text to which you refer. That’s the list that begins with ‘I have not . . . ’ followed by specific crimes or faults the deceased swears he has not committed. There are some similarities—though many differences as well.”

“Consider first the similarities,” Neferankhotep said patiently. “Both contain provisions against killing, stealing, lying, and sexual contact that violates the bonds of marriage. Your commandments show greater concern for refining the rights of property, while ours demonstrate more concern for the personal harmony of the individual soul in relation to society.”

“But you admit,” Neville said rather desperately, “that there are differences.”

“There are,” Neferankhotep agreed. “However, when one moves beyond these simple lists to the more detailed rulings contained in other texts in your Bible, even those differences begin to vanish. The one place we are in greatest disagreement is that none of your religions accept the existence of gods other than your strange One in All, All in One.”

Dry laughs, quickly muffled, came from the associated gods.

“However,” Neferankhotep continued, frowning sternly at his fellow deities, “we are willing to grant that your actions in coming hence are in keeping with fidelity to your monotheist creed, for surely you would not have acted as you did if you truly believed that divine vengeance would be the end result.”

“So we’re off the hook?” Eddie asked, his words hopeful, but doubt in every line of his face.

“Not in the least,” Neferankhotep said. “There remains the question of those commandments you did violate: lying, killing, stealing . . .”

Eddie stepped closer to Neferankhotep, and Neville saw rising in his friend the fire of the convert who followed his religion not through habit nor even through expedience. Eddie might have begun his conversion to Islam out of love for Miriam, but clearly he had worked his way toward devotion to Islam through long intellectual exercise.

Neville felt a momentary flutter of pity for the mullahs who had been forced to deal with the stolid reason of this English farmer’s son, yet they must have felt their labors worthwhile in the end. Eddie was a Mohammedan of whom any teacher could be proud.

“Even those commandments that may have been violated,” Eddie said to Neferankhotep “are open to interpretation. Consider the case of a man who steals to feed his child. He has without a doubt committed theft. However, if he does not steal and the child dies, then is he guilty of murder through his inaction? Some scholars say that the commandment is against murder, rather than mere killing, but where is the line drawn? Is the soul of a commander who sends soldiers into the field or that of a king who hires an assassin free from complicity? Equally, is the one who kills or steals because so commanded free from guilt because he was only following orders?”

“I cannot argue that there are not subtleties,” Neferankhotep replied, his tone without rancor. “Yet equally, you cannot argue that here there is a question of a child needing food, or of a king commanding either army or assassin—unless you are stating such as a means of being excused for your own actions.”

“No!” Eddie retorted hotly. “Not in the least. I am merely trying to show that reviewing a list of commandments and deciding which have and have not been violated is not always the best course toward justice.”

“Yet,” Neferankhotep said, “you must admit it is an equable approach.”

“I must do no such thing,” Eddie replied.

He was obviously about to launch into another instructive example when a new voice entered the debate. It was a sweet, feminine voice, that for all its sweetness was not without strength and decisiveness.

“Great Osiris living,” said the goddess Maat, “you were known both in life and after death as a man who reigned in keeping with maat. These before you appeal to you to continue to rule thusly. Why else would they argue, if they did not believe you were one who would listen? To the end of serving both your reputation and their desire, I beg leave to put a proposal before you.”

“Great goddess before whom even gods are judged,” Neferankhotep replied, bowing his head, “I listen.”

“Let each individual here be judged,” Maat said, “only for those deeds that directly relate to their coming before you.”

“Interesting,” Neferankhotep said. “Why not? I have no desire to be unreasonable.”

“Moreover,” Maat continued, “judge them by the conventions we share—those you have already explained with such eloquence and grace. However, let all of those judged be given an opportunity to explain themselves, so that no injustice is done. As Edward Bryce has stated, neither truth nor justice are understood in the same fashion, even through the eyes of those who share a code.”

“I will agree to these amendments to our usual procedure,” Neferankhotep said. “However, each and every member of this company must submit themselves to judgment alone and without assistance. They must accept the penalty if they fail to be found vindicated and in balance with maat.”

“This seems reasonable,” Maat agreed.

“And what is the penalty?” Neville asked.

The pharaoh indicated the monster Ammit.

“Being thrown to Ammit is traditional.”

The monster snapped her jaws in agreement.

“Right,” Neville said.

“And our reward when we are judged vindicated?” Jenny asked defiantly, tossing back her hair and thrusting out her chin. “I seem to recall there were rewards for passing judgment. Seems only right we have something good to look forward to for putting up with all this.”

“Rewards,” Neferankhotep said, “will be discussed if and when you are so judged.”

The pharaoh smiled upon them with benign tranquility before waving his crook. A mist descended over them all, wrapping them in stifling folds. Though Neville struggled to reach any of those who he had put under his protection, his limbs would not move, bound by the strength of his own guilt and fear.

When the mist raised, Neville’s first thought was that the colors were more brilliant than anything he had ever seen—than anything he had ever even imagined. Compared to the hues with which the assembled gods and goddesses were adorned, the luster of a peacock’s tail was as flat as ash, the glory of sunlight a snuffed candlewick, and all the jewels that had ever adorned the wrist or throat of woman were mere unpolished pebbles.

Neville stepped from the mist into this glory, and his words strangled in his throat. Then an odd certainty came to him. If beings who possessed such beauty found him worthy of judging, then he must possess some worth.

“Am I then the first?” he asked.

“Does that matter?” Neferankhotep replied.

“It does to me,” Neville said. “If the others have not yet been judged, then I can again appeal to you on their behalf.”

“Consider that appeal made,” Neferankhotep said, “and leave it behind you. Concern yourself not with the fate of others, but with your own standing. As you yourself must know—for you have repeatedly attempted to take the guilt upon yourself—you are called to defend yourself most especially on the matter of theft. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty,” Neville replied firmly. “I have stolen from no one.”

“But you cannot say you did not intend theft,” Neferankhotep persisted.

Neville squared his shoulders, trying hard not to look where the scales waited to one side, nor at Ammit poised with the patient ferocity of a hunting dog who knows she will be permitted her share of the kill. He felt himself the focus of many pairs of eyes, but addressed himself only to Neferankhotep, and to Maat who stood behind the pharaoh’s throne. The good king maintained his aura of kind patience, but the goddess emanated something so overwhelmingly strange that Neville could hardly grasp it. Hers was truth inscrutable and unwavering, yet without any of the malice a human—or a human system of judging truth—might bring to the task.

“I did not intend theft,” Neville replied. “For theft to be intended there must be an owner from whom the thief steals. What I intended was no more than a gathering up of something lost—a returning to human memory of something that had been forgotten.”

He thought this argument was a good one, for the ancient Egyptians had feared being forgotten more than they had feared death.

Neferankhotep did not appear swayed, for he immediately asked another question.

“Do you then own the land within which my tomb rests? I think not. I think that what you would have done would have been theft, if not from me, then from those who administer treasures from the past for the people of the present.”

Neville shook his head, denying the charge.

“I have taken nothing, therefore I cannot be judged as guilty of theft from you or from Egypt.”

Neferankhotep’s elegant mouth moved in a smile that, while not dismissing the matter, did agree to move to another point.

“Can you say that you have not lied in pursuit of these goals?”