And when he arrived, plunging down a slope, leaping from rock crest to sand hill, he saw that the girl had blond hair.
Annie’s was dark.
CAMILLA: 1899
“Let us descend,” said Dr. Lightner at last. “There is work to do.”
Down was easier than up. There were fewer occasions on which it was necessary to cling to each other. Camilla could not bring herself, an athlete, to pretend she needed help when she did not.
Halfway down Dr. Lightner said, “Tell me what sort of ball games you delight in.”
She was touched that he had been paying attention to her from the first. “Basketball. Have you ever had the pleasure?”
“Oh, yes! We play basketball here for amusement. My young men all played for their colleges. How your team must relish you! You are so magnificently tall.”
Camilla stared at Dr. Lightner’s weathered face. Sun had burned it to bronze and split it in cracks.
They walked slowly toward the tents, finding much to say. How marvelous to be with a man who was not letting go of her hand. How marvelous, in fact, were hands.
A boy about Camilla’s own age suddenly came bounding and yelling toward them.
Camilla was pretending to be thirty, which seemed like the right age for a seasoned reporter sent halfway across the world to write about scientific events, but in fact, she was seventeen. The boy too had the air of somebody pretending to be older, but in fact, still in his teens.
She had the oddest sense that he was racing toward her. That they knew each other. She even had the thought that she shocked him; that he was not prepared for the sight of her.
It was not until he pulled up next to them, breathless and excited, that Camilla saw he was astonishingly handsome and very unkempt. His jacket was in desperate need of button reattachment and his trousers needed mending.
“Dr. Lightner! Sir!” he cried. “I have found an undiscovered tomb.”
Camilla laughed out loud at this pathetic claim. It was surely the daydream of every tourist: I’ll stoop down, find pottery with hieroglyphs, kick away a rock and expose a tomb, which will be filled with gold.
“I knocked over my tripod whilst preparing my camera,” said the boy. “The wooden legs are heavy and topped with brass casings. They hit against a desert stone and when I looked, it was not stone at all, but plaster camouflaged as a rock!”
Dr. Lightner quivered. “Perhaps I should take a look.”
He and the boy walked with measured pace, though Camilla thought they wanted to fly through the air, dive into the sand and come flailing to the surface with their arms full of Egyptian gold.
In moments, the entire expedition was trooping along, whispering and wondering. What a gathering of fine young men! Camilla gathered that these were intellectuals from the great universities of the world, taking six months or a year to indulge a passion for archaeology. She wondered what it could be like to have the money to do such a thing.
“What is the significance of the plaster?” she asked one of them.
“In my studies at Yale,” he told her, “I learned that in ancient times, the entry to a tomb was often disguised with plaster dyed to match the desert.”
It did not seem to Camilla it had been necessary to wedge Yale into the response. She decided that she, in turn, would wedge an important women’s college into the conversation, as if she too recalled tidbits from otherwise dull lectures.
“You are a lucky reporter, Miss Matthews,” said one of the young men. “A real scoop. What an article you will write!”
Camilla was horrified. She didn’t know a thing about reporting. She had planned to fake all that.
“What newspaper are you from?” asked the Yale man. “Boston?” he said. “New York?” It had to be one of these; no other city mattered.
“I’m from Kansas,” she said, preparing to hand him the fake card she had had printed up to support her fake credentials.
They burst into uproarious laughter at the idea that people in Kansas could read, or even printed newspapers.
Furious and embarrassed, Camilla took pad and pencil from her satchel and pushed her way to the front. Ladies did have a few advantages in this world. No man would think of pushing back.
A few taps of the chisel and it was established that behind the plaster were flat stones, easily dragged aside, and below them … a man-made rectangle. The entrance, perhaps, to the shaft of a tomb.
Dr. Lightner stood for the boy to photograph him above the unopened site. He contained his excitement poorly. He could not stay motionless for the lengthy time a photograph required.
Camilla found she had already written three paragraphs.
The removal of rubble from the shaft began.
The Egyptians were told to work faster, but that did not occur. They had a tempo. They did not rush. After all, thought Camilla, the rocks have been there five thousand years. It’s Americans who rush.
Long before they had made much progress, the shadows were too thick for work to go on. People sighed, agreeing to leave the rest for the morrow, and went sadly and separately to their tents.
Camilla, however, approached the boy. She was amazed by his physical beauty. Burnished by the Egyptian sun, the youth shone. He had retreated over the sand, and was facing the Sphinx, but his thoughts were clearly on a tiny envelope in his hand.
The envelope was not two inches long, the color of an American sky before an autumn storm: gray with tints of angry yellow. He held it to his lips. It was not a kiss, more a communion.
Communion.
She was Camilla Mateusz again, thinking of all the Sundays in this wicked year in which she had not gone to Mass and had not taken Communion and had not been a good person. Her eyes blurred with shame.
The boy put the envelope in his shirt pocket, so that it lay over his heart. Uncertainly, Camilla interrupted and was met by a sweet half-smile.
“Might we sit upon one of the Pyramid stones and talk to each other?” asked Camilla. “If you are willing, tell me the details of your discovery for my article.”
They circled the Sphinx. The serpent charmers had packed up, the watermelon vendors were sold out and the tables of souvenirs had vanished. The boy took her arm as if they were off to a dance, and they walked over a vast pavement, tilted now by the ravages of Time, and arrived at Khufu’s Pyramid.
The best spot was several stones up and they climbed together. “Girls can’t usually swing up like that!” he said respectfully. “I’ve known only one.”
“What was her name?” asked Camilla.
“Annie.” His voice was so soft she could hardly hear. He traced the outline of the tiny envelope in his pocket.
“What is that in your pocket?” she asked. Working for Duffie had destroyed her inhibition against asking about people’s private lives. She must remember that ladies did not pry. Of course, reporters always pried. Perhaps she could not be both.
He answered with courtesy. “Once, long ago, I loved a young lady. We left each other. There was no choice in the matter. All I have of her, and all I ever will, is a lock of her hair.”
He carried that girl’s token against his heart. Camilla’s own heart was assaulted. Would any man ever feel that way toward her? She could not prevent a prayerful vision of herself and Dr. Lightner together, and had to blush at such foolishness. A great scholar? Interested in a half-educated girl, half his age, pretending to be a reporter?
Perhaps she really could be a reporter. Then there would be one true thing in her life. She would not entirely be a tissue of lies. “You and I were never introduced,” she said. “I must have your name for my article so that you may receive credit for finding the shaft. I am Miss Camilla Matthews, newspaper reporter from Kansas.”
“Really?” he said with interest. “Tell me about Kansas.”
Camilla had never been west of New York City, so her answers lacked validity, but Strat repeated her words carefully. He would probably carry them around all his life.
“This has been a lovely night,” he said then. “Allow me to escort you to the tent that Dr. Lightner has arranged for you, Miss Matthews.”
“I still do not know your name, sir.”
“You need not use my name in your article, Miss Matthews.”
She was astonished. “This discovery could be your future.”
He shook his head, not interested in his future.
“What shall I call you then, since I am to stay at your camp for some time?” She extended her hand, firmly and in a masculine fashion, so he would not become confused and think she wanted to lean on him.
“People call me Strat,” he said finally.
The son of the man who had murdered her father shook Camilla’s hand.
III
Time to Fear
ANNIE
Reeds as thick as Annie’s wrist, but unnaturally shaped in triangles—like no plant on earth she had ever heard of—towered around and above her. Lacy fronds and leaves closed out the sky. Fat roots fondled the mud in which they grew, and the mud caught her toes and sucked at her heels.
Birds shrieked. Water lapped. A cloud of purple dragonflies needled past and a frog vaulted out of the water, its wet skin brushing her ankle.
Annie had never known such heat. Sweat poured off her, soaking through her clothes. A white-winged heron rose languidly in front of her, as if half-asleep; as if all creatures, herself included, could not fully waken in this heat.
Gripping the heavy stems—trunks, almost—of the reeds, she tried to find her way out. Out of what? she thought, trying not to sink into terror as she was sinking into mud. Into what?
Leaves as hot as if they had been fried slapped her in the face. The air was so thick with moisture that no matter how deeply she breathed, she failed to find enough oxygen.
“Strat!” she screamed, for he must be here. The only reason Time had hurled her here—wherever she was—was to find Strat.
Nobody answered.
Huge rotting plants rimmed the edges of deep water. She could find no land, no solid earth. To break through these reeds would take a machete. The clothing bought in hope of an adventure was drenched and stinking and the wonderful shoes full of mud and probably leeches, even now sucking on the bottoms of her feet.
In front of her, the water turned gray, developed slick spots and heaved. Two bulging eyes stared at Annie. A pink mouth as large as a trash can opened up and the beast bellowed, its fat teeth as big as her palm.
When it sank back down, a wave lashed up and soaked Annie to the knees.
A hippopotamus. Not the sweet little blue pottery hippo sold in the museum shop. The real thing. The real hideous and dangerous thing.
Annie thrashed around, screaming for help.
Any help. Any people, from any time.
But only the hippo returned to stare at her.
LOCKWOOD STRATTON
The boy named Lockwood Stratton had never had a fainting spell, nor ever been dizzy, nor ever needed glasses.
Now he seemed to be struggling with all three.
His fingers shivered over the white tablecloth. He concentrated on figuring the tip and putting the bills down. What he had just seen—or not seen—was strange, but more strange was that he had come to the museum at all.
He had no interest in his family background. Any mention of ancestors and he fell asleep or left the room, moaning. And yet when he had read the article about the Egyptian exhibition (he, who never read anything, not even his assignments!), he thought: My ancestor was the photographer at that dig.
His mother would have been thrilled that her son was having a cultural moment.
His father would have been astonished that he even remembered from whom he was descended.
But he had not told them. He had come into the city alone. Nobody did that. What fun was it to be alone in New York?
Well, I’m not alone now, he said to himself.
He and this Annie Lockwood would go back upstairs and finish seeing the special exhibition. How amazing that she and he shared a name and a history.
“Well, let’s head on back,” he said cheerfully, although he was not cheerful. He was still shaken by the way she had—but it was impossible. He had not seen that, because it hadn’t happened.
“We still have half the exhibition to look at,” he told her.
Nobody answered.
In fact, when he forced himself to raise his eyes from the tablecloth and look around, nobody was there. Not Annie, not the couple arguing at the next table, not even a waiter. The restaurant was empty and quiet. He walked uneasily toward the exit. He saw Annie Lockwood nowhere. She was distinctive, with that falling black hair.
She’s got to be right here, he told himself. Waiting for me in the hall.
But she wasn’t.
He saw the sign for the ladies’ room, so he sat on a bench with some other men and waited patiently. But she didn’t come out.
Great. I’ve lost her. Maybe she lost me, too, and she’s gone back to the exhibition looking for me.
So he trooped back up the Grand Staircase, but she was not there.
He was embarrassed by how upset he was. Had she fallen into his life, full of delight and stories and lovely dark hair he yearned to touch, and he was so boring she just got up and left?
Although what he had seen was not exactly getting up and leaving.
He circled the special exhibition, pausing at the photograph under which he and this Annie Lockwood had met. The photograph seemed different. As if somebody had been added, or subtracted.
Impossible, he said to himself, shaking off a return of the dizziness that had struck in the restaurant.
He heard Annie scream for help, and he swerved, eyes wide open, to see where it had come from, but the room was empty, except for a guard who stared at him with a strange heavy-lidded antique look.
She went downstairs to the regular Egyptian collection, he told himself. I’ll find her at the Temple of Dendur, sitting by the reflecting pool.
RENIFER
Pankh poled the little skiff through the papyrus reeds while Renifer sang. Fat pads of lotus swirled by, while brick-red swallows dipped and swerved in their quest for bugs. The hoopoe, a bird Renifer loved beyond all others, followed them, jumping from one papyrus frond to the next. Once she saw the snout of a crocodile, and, distantly, she heard the shrieks of baboons.
Renifer had had the servants put together a picnic basket and she fed Pankh dates and they drank sweet fig juice from the same bowl. She offered him cold duck and he nibbled the meat right down to her fingers. They dipped bread in salted oil and shared a block of cheese.
Twice he kissed her, and the reed boat trembled as they fought for balance, both physical and emotional. He was so handsome. When she looked at Pankh, she could think of nothing but marriage and the joy it would bring. Father, however, had lost his joy in the coming event. He was quiet. He was, in fact, fearful.
What could it mean?
Marriage must not be entered into lightly. She must be sure of Pankh, and he of her. So Renifer said to him, “We must talk of important things.”
He had to laugh at the idea that girls had important things in their lives. He poled into the swamp until the papyrus towered above them, six and eight and ten feet of strong triangular stalks, the wide flat heads darkening the sun.
“You are the most beautiful girl in Egypt,” said Pankh. “I am all that is important to you. I will give you everything.”
“But what I want, Pankh, is the truth. Tell me what is between you and Father.”
“That is between men, Renifer. Men make choices in life. Your father has made his. He will live with them or he will die with them. It is not your place to consider truth or lack of truth. It is your place to obey. Yesterday you obeyed your father; from now on, you will obey me.”
Renifer had stopped listening to him. She was watching the most amazing terrifying thing she had ever seen. A spirit was materializing before her. First there was mist
. Then shape. Then color and movement.
It was a ka.
Renifer had known all her life, and worshiped the fact, that the ka returned one day to the body. That was why it was necessary to save the corpse. Without a body, no ka could find its way home. But she and Pankh were deep within a jungle of papyrus. There could be no body buried here. The ka was lost.
Renifer could think of nothing more dreadful. She prayed that the ka would depart without touching them. Its shape was thickening now, and taking on human form, creating its own body, here in the papyrus! Renifer gazed in awe and terror.
Pankh, realizing he had lost his audience, turned to look where she looked.
“It’s a lost ka,” whispered Renifer, so frightened she could not think what god to call upon.
But the ka saw them and cried out.
“Hetepheres,” whispered Pankh. He fell to his knees and the reed boat, fortunately stable and hard to sink, shuddered under the weight of his collapse.
How could it be the ka of Hetepheres? wondered Renifer. Why would the name Hetepheres even enter Pankh’s mind? She has been dead for a year. Besides, the queen was buried so well and so richly. If ever a ka had a good place to return to, it is the queen’s tomb.
“Go home!” Pankh yelled at the ka. “Get away from us!”
But if it were a ka, it did not appear Egyptian. It came closer, and the tears it wept were real tears. It smelled bad, as foreigners did.
Renifer decided to treat it as she would a sacred animal—an ibis, or a cow dedicated to Hathor. The first thing was to feed it. She held out a date in the palm of her hand and in her other hand, a cup of fig juice, although it was doubtful that a creature so primitive would know how to drink from a cup, any more than a cow would.
But the creature seized the cup, drinking noisily, and then bit down hard on the date. It seemed astonished that the date contained a pit and spat the whole thing out. Renifer gave the creature bread instead, and it consumed the bread like a wild dog. Then it stood panting and whimpering.