The Buried Pyramid (72 page)

I guess they are doing their job,
Jenny thought, seeing from the look on the man’s face that he’d hit his funny bone, and was in more pain than such a blow would usually occasion.

Taking advantage of his momentary inaction, she drew her club back and down close to her side. Then she brought it up again with all the force she could put behind it, landing hard between his legs.

The dangling fabric of his loincloth absorbed some of the force, but he’d wrapped it tightly, doubtless to make squirming through holes easier. Snake screamed as the club caught his privates, doubling over and dropping his knife.

Jenny was amazed and slightly appalled at the pain she had caused, but she didn’t let this stop her from knocking the tall man down. There was a muffled chinking sound as items stuffed into the fabric of his loincloth dropped to the floor, but Jenny had more to worry about than treasure.

Taneni was climbing out from the hole under the Ammit couch, clearly prepared for trouble. He appeared little more than a boy, but carried a knife as if quite ready to use it.

Rashid’s back was turned, as he kept watch on the tunnel entrance. Jenny didn’t know if she could reach Taneni and keep control of her human snake, who even now was beginning to recover from the shock, murder in his eyes.

“Rashid!” she called out. “Behind you.”

The Egyptian youth wheeled and struck Taneni full in the face with oil from a bottle he had ready.

Taneni screamed at him, “Idiot! Do you know what that’s worth?”

I wonder if he thought Rashid was one of their own,
Jenny thought, giving in to a strange sense of humor.

She’d taken her cue from the pharaohs and stepped on the back of her captive. Using her weight to hold Snake down, she reminded him with a tap of her club on his inner thigh that she was in position to cause him a great deal more pain. The human snake stopped struggling at once.

Rashid dealt with Taneni, and as they were making sure their captives had been secured, Sir Neville’s voice came hollow sounding and distant down the tunnel.

“Jenny? Rashid? Are you all right?”

Jenny glanced at Rashid, who grinned at her, tapping his throat in an unnecessary reminder that he couldn’t speak. She stepped over to the hole in the door.

“We’re fine,” she called. “Only a few scrapes.”

In truth, the nick from Snake’s knife hurt quite a bit, but she’d already seen it wasn’t dangerous.

“We’ve collected six,” Neville called. “How about you?”

“Four here. Three were working the chambers, a fourth came out of the tunnel.”

“And the sarcophagus? Is the pharaoh’s body intact?”

Jenny glanced at Rashid who shrugged, then indicated he would check. A moment later he returned, his eyes shining with wonder, a quiet smile on his face. He almost seemed to have forgotten his own mission, then he shook himself and gave a thumbs up gesture.

“All intact,” Jenny called. “What do we do with our prisoners?”

“It would be best if we had them up here,” Neville said. “Air’s going to get pretty thick.”

“Air’s already pretty thick,” Jenny replied. “They were stealing perfumed oils along with the other stuff. Some of it got spilled.”

“See if you can convince them to climb up, one at a time. We’ll secure them as they emerge. Stephen’s drafting a note that may buy their lives—if they’ll turn Queen’s Evidence, that is.”

Jenny heard Stephen’s voice say faintly, “Pharaoh’s evidence.”

“Right,” Jenny called.

The thieves, beaten, bound, and thoroughly demoralized now that they realized that their captors were very strange strangers indeed, offered no trouble at all when given the opportunity to climb up. Snake made a grab for the cloth-wrapped packet he had dropped, but Jenny knocked his hand away.

“That belongs to the pharaoh,” she said. “If it didn’t before, it does now. Consider it an offering for your life.”

That cowed him, and from that moment forward he was the most cooperative of the captives.

As the thieves made their climb one by one, Jenny took the time to clean her cut. The blade had been honed so sharp the wound probably wouldn’t even scar, and she took a moment to inspect the weapon. The blade was chipped from obsidian and glittered beautifully in contrast to the duller glow of the gold in the haft.

She and Rashid took turns inspecting the other chambers. When Jenny crawled through the hole that led back to the burial chamber, she instantly understood the awed look in Rashid’s eyes. The entirety of it was sheathed in gold, apparently from portable walls that had been carried down. These were closed, and she didn’t need to be an Egyptologist to guess that the pharaoh’s coffin rested on the other side.

Let him stay there undisturbed,
she thought.
Not only would that please his gods, it’s nice to think that something has been left untouched.

The room adjoining the burial chamber proved to be full of beautiful items, these oriented more toward the sacred than secular care of the pharaoh. Dominating it all was a tall shrine, guarded by four goddesses whose expressions were heartbreakingly wistful, as if they knew their task was for all eternity, and somehow futile.

Taneni had completely wrecked the other room. The jars from which he had looted the oils stood open. Others, smelling of soured wine and beer, stood with their seals broken open. Furniture and items of clothing were upended this way and that, yet with a sense of method, as if the boy had searched carefully, but with no care for damage to what he could not remove.

Yet, despite the beauty, the glow of gold, the elegant treasures demanding further inspection, Jenny was glad when her turn came to climb out. The place was somehow sad. Remembering how Neferankhotep had requested he be buried simply, so that his people could be taken care of rather than his kingdom’s wealth being buried away, Jenny thought it was rather a pity they had been forced to stop the thieves. As the marks of illness on Hem’s face attested, the gauntness and look of underfeeding that marked each thief, their lives were far from easy.

Neville was unaccountably relieved when Jenny’s tired and dirt-smeared face appeared at the top of the tunnel, happy when Rashid, slightly less battered looking, appeared after.

“Stephen’s working on a note,” he said, explaining to cover his relief. “We’re leaving it along with these fellows, and the open tomb—a reminder that the attendants should be watching more carefully.”

“How do we know someone won’t come looting before honest guards arrive?” Jenny asked worriedly.

“We thought of that,” Neville assured her. “We didn’t have much trouble getting one of the thieves to talk. In fact, after he got a look at Stephen, it was all we could do to get him to stop talking.”

Stephen looked up from where he was laboring over a piece of paper.

“Handsome is as handsome does,” he said complacently, “and here it seems my fair-haired beauty does nicely indeed.”

“For scaring the . . .” Neville swallowed and started again. “For thoroughly frightening people, your appearance certainly does something.”

He returned his attention to Jenny. The young woman was grinning at him, probably because of his rapid self-censorship.

“Our talkative friend told us where we could find an honest priest,” Neville went on. “Eddie has gone to drop a few significant hints.”

“Won’t the priest find him rather odd-looking?” Jenny asked. “I mean, Eddie’s darker than Stephen, but he still doesn’t look like an Egyptian.”

“All the better,” Neville said, with more confidence than he felt. He’d raised the same objection. “As Eddie said, if the priest sees an odd-looking fellow, his curiosity will be aroused—but Eddie doesn’t plan on being seen. It’s dark, and there will be plenty of shadows.”

“How does this sound?” Stephen interrupted. He cleared his throat and read rather self-consciously. “ ‘Amon-Ra watches over the young king. Behold! These men were seized while attempting to loot the pharaoh’s tomb. Make their trial public so that all may know the terrible fate that awaits those who violate these sacred premises, yet show mercy to those who, though sworn to guard and honor, were easily bribed to blindness. Justice must be mitigated by mercy. Remember! Your soul will be weighed against Maat.’ ”

Neville leaned over to inspect the neat hieroglyphs.

“That’s pretty elegant work for such a fast job,” he said, wondering once again if Stephen was the Sphinx. The handwriting didn’t look the same, but . . .

“I hope I didn’t spell anything too terribly wrong,” Stephen confessed. “I wish I had my grammars.”

“Why did you say Amon-Ra, rather than just Ra?” Jenny asked curiously.

Stephen relaxed, comfortable in his pedantry.

“I saw that several of the items the thieves had carried out referred to either Amon alone, or Amon-Ra, and recalled that in the New Kingdom Amon became one of the most important gods. I thought I might as well invoke him, and since Ra was our escort here, I didn’t want to leave him out.”

“How kind of you,” a familiar even voice said. Ra had appeared, standing just out of sight of where the prisoners sat bound among their donkeys. “Is all complete?”

“As complete as we can make it,” Neville said, resisting the impulse to snap “sir,” as he might have to a superior officer. “We only need for Eddie to return.”

“I shall gather him to me,” Ra said. “He has delivered his message successfully, and already the faithful one is summoning his litter and a legion of torchbearers.”

Stephen studied his note and rapidly wrote a few more characters.

“What are you doing?” Neville asked.

“Adding a postscript that they should tidy up the tomb before resealing it. From what we’ve seen, it’s probably a mess.”

He finished, and used a looted statuette to anchor his note in a visible spot in front of the huddle of bound prisoners.

“It is,” Jenny agreed, “and it smells like a brothel.”

Neville cocked an eyebrow at her, “And how would you know what a brothel smells like, young lady?”

“Easy,” she said. “Who do you think Papa sent in when he had a patient in one? You don’t think Mama would let him go in, do you?”

Somewhere in the laughter that followed this statement, Ra gathered them into the light of his presence, and when the glow dimmed to gentle gold they were again standing before Neferankhotep.

They were no longer in the Hall of Judgment, but in a beautiful chamber that combined the best of the indoors and outdoors. There were pools of water and banks of flowers, but also elegant furnishings, and ornamented pillars that appeared to hold the sky upon their fluted tops. Music was supplied both by chorusing birds, and by the harps and sistrums of perfectly beautiful young women.

Although still attired as Osiris, Neferankhotep seemed more relaxed. His feet were no longer bound, and he sat in casual comfort on a gilded stool, playing senet with the physician. A pretty woman leaned over his shoulder, offering her opinions on the best strategies. Everyone was laughing.

“My wife, Menwi,” Neferankhotep said, introducing the beautiful woman. Then, “You have been successful?”

“We have been,” Neville said. “The pharaoh’s tomb is saved from those who would have looted it, and his future safety secured to the best of our ability.”

Ra nodded, “I can confirm this, and that it was done without the taking of life.”

“Very good,” Neferankhotep said. He was about to say something more when Jenny broke in.

“Your Majesty, the tomb we saved, is it safe forever?”

“Forever is a very long time,” Neferankhotep said. “However, I can say that in your own day and time, it remains secure.”

Jenny nodded. Mozelle emerged from where she had been sleeping on a heap of pillows and padded across to Jenny, pausing to meow imperiously at the pharaoh before pawing at the hem of Jenny’s robe in a command that she be picked up. The musicians gathered their instruments and departed, as did the physician and Menwi. Ra remained, silent as the painted decorations on the walls.

I wonder if we keep the cat,
Neville thought,
or if she is indeed some sort of goddess, and so will remain.

He wondered other things as well, and Neferankhotep’s next words anticipated the questions he was trying to find a polite way to ask.