The Time Travelers, Volume 2 (22 page)

Accepting tea had been ever so wise. For now Katie was bursting with truth. “The coming war attracted Strat,” she said, leaning forward in excitement. “British troops are even now sailing up the Nile to attack rebels in Khartoum. Lord Kitchener asked for volunteers. Strat hoped to join a camel corps or help build the first desert railway on earth. But! Passing through Spain was the very famous Dr. Archibald Lightner. Of course you have heard of Dr. Lightner’s archaeological research.”

Camilla had hardly even heard of archaeology.

“Strat managed to make the great man’s acquaintance! Dr. Lightner had never had a staff photographer, as he was suspicious of the machinery, but had always used a watercolor artist. When Strat said he would become Dr. Lightner’s photographer for no pay, the great man accepted.”

Who would accept the gross and disgusting son of Hiram Stratton? Dr. Lightner had probably found out the family connection and was hoping for money. An expedition to chop open a sphinx or a blast into a pyramid must be costly.

Her heart broke watching Katie, who had only death and letters to live for.

“Strat writes often with the details of his adventures,” said Katie, fingering the letters as if they were treasure. “He sends me all he earns.”

Not likely, thought Camilla, reading the address upside down.

Katie lifted the letters to her lips and kissed them through the veil. And Camilla knew then that Katie loved Strat the way any girl loves a boy. With all her heart.

R
enifer paused to gaze at the row of bodies staked on poles along the edge of the desert.

The three tomb robbers caught last week had finally died. The priests liked to spear prisoners so the stake traveled all the way up the inside of the body, but did not instantly kill. In this case, the tomb robbers had lived many hours, and one for days. Jackals crept out from the desert by night to chew on the dead men and had not minded eating the feet and thighs of one still alive.

Renifer gave a prayer of thanks that the tomb robbers had been so thoroughly punished.

Then she looked reverently at the just-completed Great Pyramid. How splendid it was, a mountain of shining limestone.

Everybody who lived on the Nile had been part of the Pyramid’s creation.

Farmers and potters, fishermen and papyrus makers had the privilege of working on it. They cut and loaded stone, poled barges, dug out the sacred lake, paved the
causeway. They baked bread to feed ten thousand workers and sun-dried a million bricks for their houses. They constructed a slideway and ramps to move the massive rocks. They polished the limestone casing, brought flowers for offerings and carried away the sand, one basket at a time. They painted the walls of chapels and the columns of courtyards with a hundred times a hundred portraits of gods, especially their own God. Pharaoh Himself.

The celebrations for the finished Pyramid had lasted for months.

Every man and woman with the strength to greet the morning sun came. They came from Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, from Lebanon and Punt. They came if they were rich and they came if they were poor. They brought their children and their offerings and their prayers.

They rejoiced at the glory that was Pharaoh, and knelt at His passage when He was borne on His sedan chair, wearing His two crowns.

Twice, Renifer herself had attended Princess Meresankh, Pharaoh’s daughter, when the princess brought food to her dead grandmother the queen. Together, royal princess and handmaiden prostrated themselves on the blistering hot silver-faced pavement in front of the queen’s chapel.

“Mother of the King,” Renifer sang, “follower of Horus, O gracious one, whose every utterance is done for her, daughter of the God’s body, Hetepheres, we honor thee.”

Afterward, Princess Meresankh actually
spoke
to Renifer, saying how well she sang the chants.

And then the festivities ended, and all Egypt went home.

Pharaoh’s barge went back to His palace in Memphis. Shopkeepers sold linen; bakers sold bread. Boys learned to read; girls tended geese. Mothers nursed babies; farmers dug fields.

And tomb robbers, she thought, robbed tombs.

Renifer walked slowly, because it was very hot, one servant girl carrying the fruit they had bought at the market and the other fanning Renifer. Renifer was soon to have her own household and must become experienced in shopping.

Renifer was the envy of every girl she knew. Pankh was strong shouldered and brave. His skin, burnt so dark by the remorseless sun, was like black gold. He was the most handsome and the youngest supervisor of a royal wharf.

Eternal life was fine, and waiting on the princess was fine, but what Renifer cared about was having her own husband, her own house, and as soon as possible, her own children. She was fourteen and it was time.

The doorkeeper opened the big wooden entry set deep in the mud-brick wall. Inside, date palms kept the courtyard cool and shady. Father was reclining under the yellow-and-white-striped awning on the rooftop and Renifer went up the steep ladder to join him. Servants brought bread fresh from the oven and dates still hot from the lowering sun.

Soon the distant sand would turn red and purple with shadow and Pharaoh Himself would be praying for the sun’s return in the morning. She would not repeat her own prayers in front of Father, who found religion amusing. Even the Pyramid meant little to Father, who just shook his head when he happened to notice it.

“You look especially lovely today,” said her father, “and I think it time to discuss your marriage.”

“Oh, yes, Father!” cried Renifer. “Pankh will be here soon. He’s taking me to a concert on the wharf.”

The days were so hot and glaring that the best entertainments occurred after dark. She helped herself to olives, planning what to wear. She owned much gold jewelry, but neither Father nor Pankh liked her to wear it in public. Sometimes Renifer pouted over that rule.

“Perhaps,” said Father, “you should not marry Pankh after all. I can find a more prestigious match, now that you are in Princess Meresankh’s favor.”

She said dizzily, “But Father! Pankh is ready to bring me home.”

Father shrugged. “Why settle for Pankh when you could do better? My grandsons could have noble blood.”

Renifer cared more about hot blood, and from what Pankh said and did when they were alone, he could give her all the sons she might want. She tried to dispel her father’s hopes. “The princess barely noticed me. She picked me out of a row of girls. Any soprano would do.”

“No. The princess has requested you to attend her again next week. Furthermore, Daughter, the princess ordered you to meet her
within the palace walls
, not on
the plaza where the musicians gather. You, my daughter, will be in the presence of Khufu, Lord of the Two Lands. The princess wishes you to sing for Him.”

Pharaoh Himself would hear her sing?

It was too great an honor. She was not good enough.

And she was not sure she wanted the honor. She wanted to think about having a household, and folding bed linens freshly pressed, and of course making babies. If she had to sing for Pharaoh, she might get scared, and sing badly, and receive punishment, for the Living God must have the best and the first in all things.

She wanted to put Pankh first in all things. That was part of the wedding vow, and she could hardly wait to tell him yet again that he was first in all things.

“Tonight you will stay home with your mother,” said her father in the voice that brooked no discussion. “Nor will you be in the presence of Pankh. Tonight or any other night. You can do better. I shall end the engagement.”

“I must have misunderstood that statement,” said Pankh in a slow deep voice, startling them badly. He was standing on the rim of the roof, hands on hips, feet apart, looming in the dusk like a temple god. His white kilt was bright as moonlight and the gold bands on his arms as thick as jawbones. “Surely, Pen-Meru, you are not thinking of taking your daughter away from me.”

“It is not an official agreement, as you recall,” said Father dismissively. “Merely a discussion we had. A discussion I will now have with others as well.”

Pankh lifted from its pedestal the beautiful small
statue Father had recently acquired of the goddess Sekhmet.

Sekhmet was portrayed as a seated lion goddess; her powers were many and terrifying. She could escort Pharaoh in war, but also sweep the country with disease. She was both love and hatred; both revenge and protection.

This Sekhmet was pure gold and fit for a Pharaoh.

Now Pankh lifted the goddess by her back, as a cat lifts her kittens. He tapped an insolent rhythm on her lion mane.

Father sat very still.

“Renifer is mine,” said Pankh softly, “and you, too, Pen-Meru, are mine.” He tightened his grip on Sekhmet, as a killer holds the rock with which he will break the skull.

Renifer felt Sekhmet’s anger like a spider’s web. The goddess’s fury was enveloping them all, as when irrigation canals open, and water turns the world into a web of water, and none can pass.

Her father caught his breath. “I was mistaken, Pankh,” he said hoarsely. “Of course Renifer is yours. Whenever you wish her.”

Renifer could hear the slap of oars on the water of the Nile, the laughter of children playing in the neighbors’ courtyards, the rustle of palm leaves in the wind. Her father—Pen-Meru—afraid?

Servants bustled up with torches to be set in their niches, plates of meat and bread and cheese, bowls of stew with barley and chickpeas. Renifer’s little sister and
brothers, having spent the day playing naked in the sun, came shrieking and giggling for dinner, their nurses running alongside to put robes on them as the air grew chilly.

“Come, Renifer,” said Pankh. “The night is beautiful. We will return when it pleases me. Your father will not be talking to other suitors.”

Her father was no longer in charge. She might have said her marriage vows already, because Pankh was the one whose permission she needed.

In the streets of Memphis they walked. They said good evening to friends, bought sweets from vendors, listened to a band of flutes, and sat on a bench above the Nile, watching parties on pleasure boats.

“You look lovely in that shawl,” said Pankh.

“Father is always coming home with some extraordinary gift,” she said nervously. “Pankh? Up on the rooftop? It almost sounded as if you were threatening Father.”

“Silly goose,” said Pankh. “I just reminded him that I always get what I want.”

Renifer was horrified. He was begging a god to lash out and prove him wrong. Or a goddess. “But you treated Sekhmet as a weapon,” she whispered. She felt herself at the top of something as high as the Pyramid, and as steep; felt herself falling, and falling with her was a shape so terrible she must keep her eyes closed and her thoughts protected.

“A weapon?” Pankh laughed. “I was just juggling it around.” He snapped his fingers to show how little he
cared for the goddess. “If I need a weapon, I have a knife.”

“But Pankh—”

“I have reached the end of my patience,” said Pankh sharply. “I do not care for a wife who questions my decisions.”

What decisions? thought Renifer. I don’t even know what we’re talking about.

“I’m sorry,” she said humbly, but she was afraid.

Her father and her beloved were hiding something, using a goddess who would gladly destroy them with one swipe of her immortal paw.

Evil was coming, and Renifer was powerless to get out of its way.

II
 
Time to Fall

S
uddenly the special Egyptian exhibition exploded with schoolchildren. Seventh graders, possibly eighth. Filled with the noisy excitement of a field trip, they had not the slightest intention of learning anything. They rattled around the exhibition while their teacher read aloud from placards.

So she was not going to change centuries.

Strat had done that for her. He was here. In her time.

Annie wanted to touch Strat as tenderly as they had touched a hundred years ago. How perfect he still looked. He wore cargo pants and a navy sweater heavily knitted in braids and whorls. He could have been a young sailor from some Irish island, whose sister or mother had been knitting all winter to create this masterpiece. Strat’s hair was the same moppy annoying badly cut hair she had known a hundred years ago. He had worn a cute little cap then, the kind men wore when they drove automobiles with open tops and running boards.

Annie had a moment of regret. Other times were so much more exciting and romantic. Neither word could
ever be used to describe the suburbs of New York City. She had bought the adventure outfit not to travel into New York, but to travel into 1899. And now she wouldn’t get to go.

A yelling knot of boys jostled them, and then an elbowing cluster of girls. Their teacher raised her voice and loudly proclaimed her views of ancient Egyptian art. The class scattered in all directions.