The Hippopotamus Pool (9 page)

"No, my dear," said Emerson, the tone of his voice suggesting that he had some other epithet in mind. "The inscription makes it clear that Tetisheri's original tomb was at Thebes. And by a strange coincidence, the Drah Abu'l Naga mentioned by our multi-nomened visitor is the exact area in which a tomb of that period would most likely be located."

"Very true," said Ramses eagerly. "We have the testimony of the Abbott Papyrus and the discovery of the coffins by Mariette in—"

*The volume of Mrs. Emerson's diaries describing these events is among those which appear to have been lost or destroyed.

Half an hour later we were all gathered round the table examining papers, maps and photographs, and engaging in animated discussion.

All of us except Emerson. Hands clasped behind him, he was looking out the window and humming softly under his breath.

Or was he humming?

"Emerson," I said tentatively.

He turned, his features wreathed in a benevolent smile. "Yes, my dear? You wanted me for something?"

The last sentence definitely had a bite to it. I hastened to remark, "I only wanted to say, my dear Emerson, that, familiar though I am with the brilliance of your intellect, this surpasses anything else you have ever done. We will search for the tomb of Tetisheri at Thebes! I must admit I am not entirely clear in my own mind as to precisely where in that largish stretch of cliff on the West Bank you mean to begin, but I feel certain you have it all worked out, and will enlighten us at the proper time."

"Hmph," said Emerson. "I might already have enlightened you, Peabody, if you and Ramses had not kept on interrupting me. However, it will make better sense to you when you see the actual terrain. We will postpone the remainder of the explanation until then. I am deeply honored that you approve my decision."

"Quite," said Ramses. "However, Father, if I may raise a minor objection—"

"Ramses, you are always making objections," Nefret exclaimed. She slipped her arm through Emerson's and smiled up at him. "I am sure the Professor knows exactly what he is doing. A queen's tomb! It is thrilling."

"Hmph," said Emerson, in a much more affable tone than the one he had previously employed. "Thank you, my dear."

"You are absolutely correct, Nefret," I added. "The Professor always knows what he is doing. In my opinion historians have never given enough attention to the ladies, and what a remarkable woman this Tetisheri must have been—the first of that line of great queens who wielded so much power during the Eighteenth Dynasty."

"I believe," said Ramses, "that in your opinion, Father—which is, I hasten to add, mine as well—she was the mother of that king Sekenenre whose horribly mutilated mummy was found in the royal cache. His wounds suggest that he died in battle."

"You were once of the opinion that he had been murdered by the ladies of the harim," Emerson interrupted, amusement warming his blue eyes.

"I was at that time only three years of age," said Ramses in his most dignified manner. "The manuscript about the hippopotamus pool that Mother is presently translating suggests that war between the Hyksos and the Theban princes was about to be resumed. The wounds that killed Sekenenre and the hasty form of mummification employed support the idea of death on the battlefield."

Nefret had been sorting through a pile of photographs on Emerson's desk. "This is his mummy?"

It was a hideous face, even as mummified faces go—and few of them would look well framed and set on a mantelpiece. The shriveled lips were drawn back in a distorted snarl. Heavy blows had smashed the bones of the face; one long symmetrical slit in the skull must have been caused by a sharp-edged weapon, an ax or sword.

Most girls would have shrieked and covered their eyes if confronted with such an image. Nefret's voice was calm and her countenance unmoved except by remote pity. But then, I reflected, she had known many a mummy in her time. A distinct asset for a would-be archaeologist.

"Yes, that is his," Emerson answered. "Hard to imagine from that shriveled residue, but he was a handsome, well-set-up chap in his day, and barely thirty years of age when he met his death."

I joined Nefret, who went on looking at the photographs. "An unsightly portrait gallery indeed," I remarked. "It is sobering to reflect that those grisly remains, now so withered and naked and broken, were once divine monarchs and their beautiful queens. Of course we must never forget what our faith teaches us: that the body must return to the dust whence it came, whereas the soul of man ..."

"Is immortal?" In a particularly sardonic tone Emerson finished the sentence I had left incomplete—for I had belatedly realized where it was heading. Concerned as I was about Nefret's questionable religious beliefs, I had thought to administer a little lesson on Christian dogma. What I had forgotten was that the immortality of the soul was also Egyptian dogma, and that Emerson might not want to be reminded of our strange visitor and his talk of reincarnation.

"Er—yes," I said.

Nefret was too absorbed with her mummies to heed the exchange. "All of them look as if they had been in a war," she murmured, contemplating an emaciated cadaver whose nose was decidedly askew.

"He may well have been in a war," Emerson said. "That is Ahmose, Tetisheri's grandson, who defeated the Hyksos and reunited Egypt. His injuries are postmortem, however—inflicted by thieves who unwrapped the mummies looking for jewels. The poor corpses had rather a hard time of it, unwrapped and mutilated by thieves, rewrapped by pious priests—some of whom were not pious enough to refrain from removing objects the thieves had overlooked—violated again, moved from one hiding place to another in the futile hope of preserving what little remained of them. Not all of them were lovely and beautiful in their lives, though. This little old lady was practically bald by the time she arrived at the embalmers', and those protruding front teeth did not add to her charm."

"Who is she?" Nefret asked.

Emerson shrugged. "The mummies got jumbled up a bit, which is not surprising when you consider that they were moved several times. Some are unidentified, and many, I believe, were mislabeled. It will probably take years to sort them out, if it can be done at all."

"The techniques of mummification changed over the course of time," Ramses said. "One might determine thereby the approximate period in which the individual lived."

"Enough of mummies," I said in disgust.

"This is more to your taste, I suppose," Emerson said, as Nefret held up a photograph of a massive gold bracelet.

"I remember seeing these jewels in the Cairo Museum," Nefret said admiringly. "Is it certain that they belonged to Queen Ahhotep? The cartouche is that of King Ahmose—her son, I believe?"

"They were found in her coffin," Emerson replied. "So they must have been given to her by Ahmose, who was indeed her son. If the gifts he bestowed on his grandmother Tetisheri were as rich as these ..."

"It is surely too much to expect that her tomb was not robbed in antiquity," Ramses said.

"We must not get our hopes up," Emerson agreed. "A number of objects belonging to royal personages of the Seventeenth Dynasty have been discovered in modern times, including the jewelry of Ahhotep. The only one bearing the name of Tetisheri is this statuette."

There were four photographs in all, showing the statue from the front, the back, and both sides. It portrayed a young woman seated in the stiff formal pose common to such sculptures. Her garment was the simple, close-fitting shift worn by women of all ranks, supported by straps that framed her little breasts, but on her head was the vulture crown of a queen. The feathered wings framed a delicate young face.

Ramses began, "If it came from her tomb—"

"It certainly came from the Theban area. I first saw it in 1889, in the shop of an antiquities dealer in Luxor," Emerson said. "It was one of a pair."

"I did not know that," Ramses admitted with chagrin.

"Few people do. In fact, only the base of the second exists, and it is badly damaged, but it is an exact replica of the base of this statue. Before we left Cairo I went round to the French Institute, where the broken base has been rotting away ever since that moron Bouriant acquired it—God knows where or when, since he never bothered keeping records. It makes my blood boil," said Emerson, grinding his teeth, "to think how much knowledge has been lost by the carelessness of archaeologists. One can't expect any better from illiterate tomb robbers, but scholars are almost as bad, especially that bastard—"

"Emerson."

"Er—hmph," said Emerson, scowling at me as if it had been my fault that he had employed language no young lady should hear. He really did try, poor man, but he had not been named Father of Curses for nothing, and old habits are hard to break. I had more or less given up nagging him about it. It did not appear to bother Nefret, whose Nubian vocabulary included a number of words I had never asked to have translated.

"It is a lovely thing," I said, studying the photograph and wondering what there was about it that struck me so oddly. I had seen the statue several times, for it was in the British Museum. Never before had it affected me as it did now. Frowning, I went on, "Mr. Budge did not purchase it for the Museum until 1891, I believe. If you knew of it earlier you might have abandoned your principles just for once. A gift like that would have quite won my heart."

"If your protestations can be believed, your heart had already been won," said my husband coldly. "You know how I feel about buying from dealers, Amelia. Your principles are more elastic, which is why I never mentioned the statue to you. And besides—"

He broke off.

"Besides what, Emerson?"

"He was asking too much."

Emerson's forthright, candid character makes it very difficult for him to lie to me. His expression at that moment was a dead giveaway—a blend of sheepishness and attempted insouciance. He was holding something back.

Ramses had (confound the child) been absolutely correct. Emerson's analysis had cast new light on the confused history of the Seventeenth Dynasty, and was to win acclaim when it was published several years later, but it was of no help in pinpointing the location of the tomb we were after. Emerson would not sound so confident unless he had other information he had not shared with us.

There was one source from which he could have got such information. I should have been ashamed of myself for suspecting Emerson of deceiving me, but it would not have been the first time he had done so. Supposing, I thought, Mr. Shelmadine had recovered from his fit and was able to communicate with Emerson before the latter was struck unconscious? If that were the case, Emerson's only reason for concealing the truth
must
be that the knowledge of it would imperil me. (At least that was what Emerson always claimed.) And the corollary—mark my reasoning, Reader—was that it would imperil Emerson to an equal degree.

I shook off the dark foreboding this realization inspired. I had no proof that it was so. And if it was, I would get it out of Emerson one way or another.

Ramses was examining the photographs of the Tetisheri statue with unusual concentration. Then he looked directly at Nefret. She had turned away, and as Ramses's eyes moved from her delicate profile back to the photograph, and back again to Nefret, I saw it too.

Nonsense, I told myself. The resemblance was coincidental. All young women of a certain type look much alike. Maturity has not yet stamped their features with a distinctive cast of character. Thousands of girls have delicate pointed chins and rounded cheeks.

The remainder of the voyage was without incident, except for one occasion on which Emerson got away from me and I discovered him on the lower deck with Hassan and the men telling vulgar stories and smoking hashish. At least the men were smoking hashish. Emerson was smoking his pipe. I had no reason to doubt his assertion that he had smoked nothing else.

If I have not mentioned Miss Marmaduke (which in fact I have not) it is because she kept to her cabin for the first several days, suffering, as she claimed, from a mild case of catarrh. Such afflictions are common to newcomers, so, aside from visiting her daily to supply medication and inquire after her condition, I respected her request to be left alone. I hoped I had not made a mistake in employing such a feeble individual and one, moreover, who appeared to lack the neatness of mind and person I had expected. I was willing to make allowances for the faintly unpleasant odors that pervaded her room—they were not those of illness but of a herb or variety of incense, which I supposed were intended to be medicinal—but her references to prayer and meditation as a means of restoring her health forced me to warn her not to repeat those references to Emerson. He believes that God helps those who help themselves—or would, I daresay, if he believed in a god of any variety.