The Eye of Horus (8 page)

“But I have no experience in the raising of children, my lord.”

“You do not give over easily, do you,
sunu
? Another reason I need you. Call it an experiment, then, if that is what it takes. Give me a year. At the end of that time we will talk again.” He glanced up at the clerestory windows. “It is time for me to bid Amen-Re farewell, while you see to my daughter. We will talk again tomorrow, but whatever you decide, Senakhtenre, be assured that you have a friend in the house of Ramose.”

An hour later I found myself bargaining with his daughter as well. “Bastet refuses to nurse her kittens,” she insisted. “If I do not feed them, they will cry all night.”

“Tomorrow,” I repeated, watching her replace the carved wooden sticks. Was there some advantage in playing the floppy-eared hounds I didn’t know about? “The chill of evening soon will lie upon the land.”

“But evil demons hide in that dark corner and only wait for you to leave to make me sick again.” Tuli let out a pitiful howl, adding his voice to hers.

“Then put on something to keep warm, and I will take you up on the roof,” I told her, while Pagosh listened in silence.

“I am warm enough.” She jumped off the kitten couch, ready to go. She looked at me, and ran to a clothes chest. Grabbing the first tunic she found, she slipped it over her head and wriggled it down to her knees.

“Where are your sandals?” I asked.

“I don’t need any.” Apparently one look was all it took for her to tell I would not give over on this, either. “Why?”

“So you will form the habit of wearing them. There are worms in the dirt, and one kind can enter your body through breaks in the skin between your toes.”

“Oh!” Her eyes widened. “But my sandals hurt my toes. Sometimes they make me fall. What if I should break my arm or my head? Surely that is worse than having a worm crawl between my toes.”

“Then we must find you a pair that do not hurt.” While she slipped on her sandals I reached into my goatskin bag for one of the carved animals I carry to distract a sick child. “A blind man carved this from a piece of papyrus root.” I held out the little lion.

“Truly? How, if he cannot see?”

“By feeling with his fingers until the shape fits the picture he carries in his memory. Just because a man loses his sight does not mean he cannot remember what he has seen.” She closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the animal’s body and legs, stopping to test his ruff of dried papyrus heads, and finally the tail. Then she opened those blue eyes and gave me a smile I shall never forget. “You may keep it if you like.”

“I will treasure it always. Will you tell the blind man that for me?”

I nodded, pulled a blanket off her couch, and lifted her in my arms. Pagosh led us to the steps leading up to the roof, with Tuli running ahead, then circling back. He was too excited to go slowly but unwilling to let Aset out of his sight.

The fiery orb of the sun was just beginning to slide behind the western cliffs, and a cloud of dust hovered over the red sand, like smoke rising from the burning desert. I lowered her to a bench beneath the palm-frond canopy and for a while we sat taking in the scene around us. As boys Mena and I used to climb the red cliffs that guard the Place of Truth, to stand high above the mud-brick houses below and look across the river to the Eastern Desert and distant mountains,
wondering what lay beyond them. Now we looked toward the fine houses around Pharaoh’s palace and the village of the necropolis workers nestled in the low, rocky hills.

“Look, Tenre.” She pulled one arm free of the blanket. “See the canal to Pharaoh’s House of Jubilation? That is where my sister Ankhesenpa lives, and Merankh.”

I stared at the rambling complex of royal apartments, understanding for the first time what she meant when she had promised Tuli not to leave him, even to go across the river with her lady mother. “Ankhesenpa?” I repeated, since she used the Queen’s old birth name, which had been changed when she married her mother’s brother, Tutankhamen.

“Pharaoh’s Great Royal Wife. Now that I am well I will visit her, to cheer her up. Her little babe came into the world asleep, and none of Pharaoh’s physicians could wake him. Ankhes is the one who taught me how to make rag dolls, for Tuli, so he will not be so lonely when I am at the temple.”

“And Merankh?”

“He is Tutankhamen’s great huge hunting hound. Except he barks when he is not supposed to and scares the birds away before my uncle can loose an arrow or throw a stick. At times he even knocks me down with his tail, though he does not mean to.”

For a while we sat watching Re sail his boat toward the western horizon, listening to the stillness. It seemed to me as if every living creature held his breath, waiting for the goddess to cry—except Tuli, whose tongue lolled from the side of his mouth while Aset stroked his back with a bare foot.

I was trying to think of a story to amuse her when my eyes fell on a lotus-covered pond. Banked to contain the water flowing into it from a nearby collecting tank by way of a canal, it contained a thin sheet of water even with the harvest season near an end.

“Do you know what those are?” I asked Aset, pointing.

“I think—” She stretched taller and whispered what sounded like, “Yes, but where could they have come from?”
Then in a voice full of excitement she exclaimed, “It is a great herd of elephants! See how they flap their big ears to fan themselves in the heat?” She glanced at me. “Don’t you see them, Tenre?”

I glanced down to find her watching me with the unwavering gaze of a child who never gets enough to eat. “Of course, I only wanted to be sure. They appear to be the rarest kind, too—the ones with blue eyes.”

“As blue as mine?” Still she watched me.

“Uh—no, not quite,” I replied, after looking again. The big green leaves did look like elephant’s ears. “But then I have never seen any as blue as yours, even on a monkey.” She laughed with delight, a soft sound that bubbled in her throat.

To keep her smiling I told her about the vervet monkey Khary was training to pick figs from the sycamores, who eats two for every one he puts in his basket. By the time I finished, the sky was awash with color and the shadows below the red cliffs were reaching across the valley, like fingers trying to hold on to the thin strip of river.

“Did you know that before the world began there was nothing but water, anywhere? Until one day a blue lotus rose from the water.” Apparently she thought it was her turn to tell me a story. “When the lotus opened its petals, a beautiful goddess was sitting in its golden heart—the one we call Re. Light streamed from her body to banish the darkness. But she was lonely, so she imagined all the other gods and goddesses, and gave them life simply by naming them. Nut, our Mother Sky. Geb, the earth, and Shu, the air that separates them.” She paused. “Did you know the lotus blossom closes its petals every evening and vanishes back into the water? One day perhaps she will not return at all and there will be nothing but darkness ever again.”

All the wriggling had caused her blanket to fall to the bench, so I wrapped it around her shoulders and tucked in the corner. “The lotus blossom opens in the morning and closes in the evening. Some never reopen, others do for perhaps
three or four days. Then it sinks under the water, where it gives birth to a number of seeds, so there is no reason to worry or feel sad.”

“How can you know that?”

“When I was a boy I spent many an hour watching the blossoms open and close.”

“Why?”

I lifted her onto my lap to shield her from the breeze as Re reached between the cliffs to kiss Mother River farewell, setting the sky afire with streaks of crimson and gold. “My father had me learn my numbers by counting the lotus blossoms in our pond. When a seed is ready, tiny sacs of air lift it to the surface of the pond, where it drifts until they dry and pop open. In that way the seed falls to the bottom in a new place, where it puts down roots and sends up another plant.”

“How I wish I could have been there with you, to watch the seeds bob to the surface of the pond.” She sighed, then was quiet for so long I thought she had fallen asleep. Reluctant to disturb her, I sat watching Re spread a blazing sheet of orange across the quiet surface of the Nile, until—without warning—she twisted around to peer at my face.

“Must I always be sick before you will come to see me?” I knew then that my decision had been made for me, with just one word. Why?

“Soon I will be here every day, for I am to become physician to your father’s household. Perhaps then you will come to visit me.” A brilliant smile lit her enormous blue eyes, making me want to give her something more. “But next time I will take the Hounds, while
you
play the Jackals.”

They were crowded into one of two side rooms that looked out through a glass window to the scanner, where Tashat lay with her head just inside the gantry of the huge white cylinder—like an ancient sacrifice about to be sucked into the gaping maw of some hungry monster.

“Let’s begin at five millimeters,” Max suggested to Phil Lowenstein, who sat at the control console, “from the vertex of the skull to the cervicothoracic junction. I want enough measurements to produce an exact replica.”

“You name the tune and I’ll play it.” Phil’s long fingers moved over the keyboard, sending commands to the scanner. He was taller than Cleo, with a lanky build and feet to match his hands.

“That’s the equivalent of snapping a picture every five millimeters,” Kate whispered to Cleo, “from the top of the skull to the base of her neck.” She calculated how many “slices” that would produce and came up with 125—of the head alone!

With his part done, Phil swiveled around on his stool, hardly able to keep his eyes off Kate’s old roommate. Cleo had dressed conservatively for the occasion in a beige ribbon-knit sheath and fringed silk piano scarf that dipped almost to her knees in back, a twenties collectible that pointed up her Irish-setter red hair. “Do you think that’s how she really looked in life?” Phil inquired.

“The Egyptians believed the spirit left the body each
morning and returned in the evening, so the funerary mask had to at least resemble the person it belonged to. But how closely?” Cleo shrugged and spread her hands, setting off the castanetlike clicking of a half-dozen Bakelite bracelets.

“Here comes the first one,” Max announced, moving back so Kate and Cleo could see each image or “slice” as it came up on the monitor. “Keep in mind that what we’re seeing on the left is Tashat’s right side. This rounded shape is the outline of the cartonnage”—he leaned forward to point to the wavering gray lines—“and these are layers of bandaging. This thicker outline is the skull, which shows white because the radiodensity of bone is high compared to the soft tissues.”

New images came and went at a fairly fast clip, requiring their eyes to constantly process and release each complex image, usually before Kate was ready. Max let several go by before he spoke again.

“Remember what I said about the seams or sutures in the skull closing at different ages?” He glanced at Cleo. “The first starts closing at twenty-two, the second at twenty-four, and the last one at twenty-six. See this line?” He pointed again. “This is the second suture. It looks fuzzy because the edges are starting to feather. That means it’s beginning to close.”

“You’re saying Tashat was Kate’s age?” Cleo inquired.

Max sent Kate a quizzical glance. “If you mean between twenty-four and twenty-six, yes,” he confirmed. “I don’t see any sign that the last suture is beginning to close, but I’ll wait until we see the epiphyses before making a final judgment.”

“Epif—what’s that?” Cleo mouthed to Kate.

‘The growing ends of the long bones in the arms and legs, hands and feet,” Phil replied, “where the soft cartilage eventually turns into bone.”

Cleo glanced at Max. “Okay, but if the last one starts to close at twenty-six, how would you know if someone is—oh, say your age?”

Kate wanted to kick her, but Max took no notice of Cleo’s heavy-handed remark. “The sutures reach closure in the same
order—at thirty-five, forty-two, and forty-seven—so we’d extrapolate more or less the same way. Generally we have the most success between twenty and fifty-five, since other changes occur with puberty and senility. In females the epiphyses close three to four years after menarche, for instance.”

“Yeah, the clavicle is among the last to unify,” Phil added, “at its medial end, where it meets the sternum. Usually between twenty-three and twenty-five.”

“What about race?” Cleo persisted. “Doesn’t that have to be taken into account?”

Max shook his head. “I’d expect more difference between males and females. But we don’t have any reliable statistical difference in either case, race or gender. I suppose there might be some effect from the difference in nutrition then and now, but not nine or ten years.”

“I don’t understand why you need so many measurements. Most physical anthropologists do discriminant function analysis with only eight.” Aware that Cleo didn’t know zip about statistical analysis, Kate almost laughed.

“Sure, if all you’re looking for is gender and race,” Phil answered. “You could even get by with five if they’re the really crucial measurements—total facial height, sinus breadth, bigonial and bizygomatic breadth from a posterioranterior shot, plus one from a lateral.” Kate didn’t dare look at Max, afraid she would break up. “Listen, guys who work for the police, like that famous Dr. Snow,” Phil continued, as if he hadn’t just snowed Cleo with jargon, “actually get to handle the bones people dig up. Nothing like what we’re doing here.”

Max came to her rescue. “Discriminant analysis gets sex right about ninety-five percent of the time but on race the success rate drops to eighty percent. And that’s broadly speaking—Caucasoid, Negroid, or Mongoloid—without ethnic breakdowns.”

If Cleo was searching for some way to discredit what they found, she was fishing in the wrong pond, Kate was thinking when Max put a hand on Phil’s shoulder. “Wait up, Phil. Can
you stop that before it gets away?” He motioned for Kate to come closer. “Look between the eye sockets.”

Unaccustomed to viewing the skull in cross section, Kate tried to identify the thin, spidery lines. “It looks almost spongy.” Then it dawned on her. “Ethmoid air cells?”

Max nodded. “The ethmoid is intact. They didn’t enter the brain vault.”

“Sometimes they removed the brain through a hole at the base of the skull,” Cleo put in, “though not until several hundred years later … we think.”

“We’ll watch when we hit the foramen magnum, then, where the spinal cord joins the brain.”

The conversation continued to flow around her, but Kate concentrated on what she could see.

“Pretty good teeth, considering,” Max commented at one point. “Very little decay found in any of the mummies, but sand in their food wore their teeth down, caused a lot of abscesses, which they treated with turpentine and ground mandrake root.” He paused. “What d’you think about those third molars, Phil?”

“I’d say they’re in.”

Max watched several more images come and go. “Nothing unexpected in the soft tissues around the cervical spine.” He waited a second. “Okay, let’s go to a composite of the entire head.”

Kate turned away while the computer carried out Phil’s commands, dreading what she knew was coming—Tashat as she looked right now, under the bandages and that mask.

“Left anterior oblique view coming up,” Phil announced.

Knowing what to expect didn’t compare with the actuality, a ghostly white apparition, disembodied, hovering in a black void. Cadaverous, with retracted lips, sunken cheeks, prominent cheekbones, and mandible all clearly visible through the shroud of leathery skin.

Kate stared, fascinated and repelled at the same time. It hardly looked human with all the cross sections stacked like geologic strata, giving the silhouette a stair-stepped edge.
She shut her eyes, trying to hold on to the image of the vital young woman who lived in her imagination, fearing that she might never get it back—that Tashat’s death might intrude on her life. In the blackness behind her lids, she worked at erasing the macabre image that pulled her like a magnet, against her will.

She didn’t open her eyes until she heard Max instructing Phil to take a reading every millimeter through the thoracic cavity, “to see if we can pick up any primary callus.”

He turned to Cleo and Kate. “I’ll put together what I can as we go along, but I’m not going to catch everything on this pass-through, especially with those displaced ribs coming in at odd angles.”

For several minutes no one said a word. “Clean break in the clavicle,” Max commented. Putting his finger on the bright spot above Tashat’s heart, he added, “This is about where that amulet showed up on the old X ray.”

“A scarab to protect the heart, either serpentine or jasper since they were green,” Cleo supplied, then thought to add, “usually.”

“Her arms are wrapped inside the outer bandaging,” Max continued. “Right one is folded across her chest, which we already knew from the X ray.” He glanced at Cleo. “Isn’t that a sign of royalty?”

“Wrong arm,” Cleo answered. “Even if it wasn’t, that’s not conclusive after the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Too many female mummies have turned up with their left arms folded for all of them to be royal. Some randy old pharaoh probably granted the privilege to his favorites and the practice caught on.”

“You mean the king had an annual honors list, like Queen Elizabeth, where he named his favorite bedmates?” Phil asked, momentarily breaking the growing tension.

Cleo didn’t think it was funny. “I was only suggesting how the practice might have gotten started.”

Max cast a sideways glance at Kate. To accept something
by inference without eliminating other possibilities didn’t sit any better with him than it did with her, especially if Max was right about Tashat’s age. That one discrepancy alone put everything else they thought they knew about her in question.

“Tips of the fingers on the right hand are wrapped in something with a high radiodensity,” Max observed, as a different image appeared.

“Oils and gums pretty much destroyed everything except Tutankhamen’s face, fingers, and toes,” Cleo said by way of explanation, “which were protected by gold-foil stalls and that solid gold mask.”

“Hey, Max, what do you make of this?” Phil pointed to a faint gray line. “Watch the next one. See, there it is again. And again.”

“Looks like something flat between the layers of bandaging. I’ll try collating the images later, but let’s get the distance in from the surface so I can focus down on it when I do the standard radiography.” He looked at Kate. “Can’t promise we’ll get anything, but we might as well try. See if there’s any writing on it.”

“The ink would need to have an appreciably higher radio-density than what it’s written on to show up,” Phil warned.

“Iron oxide for red, carbon for black since they used soot,” Kate told him.

By then they were well into the rib cage, and no one said another word until Phil breathed a soft, “Uh-oh!”

“Yeah, a couple of the ribs are impacted,” Max confirmed. Keeping his eyes on the monitor, he translated for Cleo. “That’s where one fragment of bone has been driven into anoth—wait up, Phil. Freeze it.” He paused. “Now improve the contrast if you can, then move in on this area, right here.” He put his finger to the monitor and with his other hand pulled a pair of half glasses from his shirt pocket. “Age is a factor in how fast a bone mends, but even in children it’s rare to see any callus in less than two weeks.”

He motioned for Kate without shifting his eyes. “See here? And here? That’s primary callus. How long would you say, Phil?”

“Three weeks max. One of those ribs could have punctured a lung or torn the liver, maybe even the spleen, but that’s not a conclusive cause of death.”

“Just the opposite if she stayed alive long enough to form callus.” Max turned to Kate. “Don’t you agree?”

She nodded, overwhelmed by an unutterable sadness. That meant Tashat had died a slow, painful death, probably by suffocation, or massive infection.

“It’s still more than likely that most of the other damage occurred postmortem,” Max reminded her before turning back to the monitor. “Okay, Phil, let’s move on.”

The images changed again and again, keeping time to some relentless beat set by the computer, a machine with a slice of silicon for a heart. And no soul.

“From here on we’re into Phil’s area of expertise,” Max said, inviting his colleague to take over the commentary.

“Well, to begin, we’ve got a fracture of the posterior lip of the right hip socket, which could result in dislocation and scatter minute granules of bone into the joint, probably what caused the shadow on that old X ray.” He pointed to a yellow spot on the monitor. “This is the pubic symphysis, where the bones meet to form the pelvis. And this indentation here tells us she had at least one child. She’s also past eighteen.”

Kate felt like a voyeur watching Tashat’s most intimate secrets revealed one millimeter at a time.

“What the hell is that?” Phil exclaimed, thrown off stride by the sudden burst of light from the monitor.

“Looks like the entire hand is encased in something.” Max glanced at Kate. “Could she be wearing some kind of glove?” Distracted by the images blossoming on the screen in quick succession, she didn’t answer. Neither did Cleo. A few seconds later Max let out a long sigh. “Jesus!”

Kate didn’t have to ask why. She had seen all the fractures
come and go, too fast to count, some with lateral slivers of bone that meant Tashat’s hand had been crushed. Yet the bright rings around each finger hardly changed from one axial image to the next.

“She was alive then, too,” Kate murmured, barely aware that she spoke aloud, “because there’s not the slightest dent in that gold glove. That’s why she’s wearing it—to protect her broken left hand.”

Phil nodded and spoke to Cleo, but Kate couldn’t make out what he said, partly because of the muted hiss of forced air, which reminded her of the subtle deafening effect of boarding a plane. When Max joined their conversation she tried to separate out what he was saying from the clacking of Cleo’s Bakelite bracelets and relentless on-off hum of the machine as it moved over Tashat’s desiccated remains. Instead, all she could hear was unintelligible gibberish. Then even that was blotted out, only to be replaced by a roaring storm of sound, fast-moving, like snow on a TV screen. The muscles in her neck tightened until her entire body felt like a vibrating string, sending a shiver of pain into her temples. The next thing she knew, Max had slipped off his sport coat and was draping it around her shoulders.

“These machines put out a lot of heat is why the airconditioning is going full blast. You okay?” Another practiced response from the ever-solicitous caretaker?