The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur. Страница 8

the tongues of Babel.

Those rooms on the second floor that contained the treasures of

Tutankhamen were so crowded that she spent little time there. She

managed to reach the display cabinet that contained the great golden

death'mask of the child pharaoh. As always, the splendour and the

romance of it quickened her breathing and made her heart beat faster.

Yet as she stood before it, jostled by a pair of big-busted and sweaty

middle-aged female tourists, she pondered, as she had so often before,

that if an insignificant weakling king could have gone to his tomb with

such a miraculous creation covering his mummified features, in what

state must the great Ramessids have lain in their funeral temples.

Ramesses II, the greatest of them all, had reigned sixty-seven years and

had spent those decades accumulating his funerary treasure from all the

vast territories that he had conquered.

Royan went next to pay her respects to the old king.

After thirty centuries Ramesses II slept on with a rapt and serene

expression on his gaunt features. His skin had a light, marble-like

sheen to it. The sparse strands of his hair were blond and dyed with

henna. His hands, dyed with the same stuff, were long and thin and

elegant. However, he was clad only in a rag of linen. The grave robbers

had even unwrapped his mummy to reach the amulets and scarabs beneath

the linen bandages, so that his body was almost naked. When these

remains had been discovered in 1881 in the cache of royal mummies in the

cliff cave at Deir El Bahari, only a scrap of papyrus parchment attached

to his breast had proclaimed his lineage.

There was a moral in that, she supposed, but as she stood before these

pathetic remains she wondered again, as she and Duraid had done so often

before, whether Taita the scribe had told the truth, whether somewhere

in the far-off, savage mountains of Africa another great pharaoh slept

on undisturbed with all his treasures intact about him.

The very thought of it made her shiver with excitement, and goose

pimples prickled her skin and raised the fine dark hair at the nape of

her neck.

"I have given you my promise, my husband," she whispered in Arabic.

"This will be for you and your memory, for it was you who led the way."

She glanced at her "Wrist-watch as she went down the main staircase. She

had fifteen minutes before she must leave for her appointment with the

minister, and she knew, exactly how she would spend that time. What she

was going to visit was in one of the less-frequented side halls.

The tour guides very seldom led their charges this way, except as a

short-cut to see the statue of Amenhotep.

Royan stopped in front of the glass-fronted display case that reached

from floor to ceiling of the narrow room. It was packed with small

artefacts, tools and weapons, amulets and vessels and utensils, the

latest of them dating from the twentieth dynasty of the New Kingdom,

1100 BC, whilst the oldest survived from the dim ages of the Old Kingdom

almost five thousand years ago. The cataloguing of this accumulation was

only rudimentary. Many of the items were not described.

At the furthest end, on the bottom shelf, was a display of jewellery and

finger rings and seals. Beside each of the seals was a wax impression

made from it.

Royan went down on her knees to examine one of these artefacts more

closely. The tiny blue seal of lapis lazuli in the centre of the display

was beautifully carved.

Lapis was a rare and precious material for the ancients, as it had not

occurred naturally in the Egyptian Empire. The wax imprint cut from it

depicted a hawk with a broken wing, and the simple legend beneath it was

clear for Royan to read: "TAITA, THE SCRIBE OF THE GREAT QUEEN'.

She knew it was the same man, for he had used the maimed hawk as his

autograph in the scrolls. She wondered who had found this trifle and

where. Perhaps some peasant had plundered it from the lost tomb of the

old slave and scribe, but she would never know.

"Are you teasing me, Taita? Is it all some elaborate hoax? Are you

laughing at me even now from your tomb, wherever it may be?" She leaned

even closer, until her forehead touched the cool glass. "Are you my

friend, Taita, or are you my implacable adversary?" She stood up and

dusted off the front of her skirt. "We shall see. I will-play the game

with you, and we shall see who outwits whom," she promised.

The minister kept her waiting only a few minutes before his male

secretary ushered her into his presence. Atalan Abou Sin wore a dark,

shiny silk suit and sat at his desk, although Royan knew that he

preferred a more comfortable robe and a cushion on the rugs of the

floor. He noticed her glance and smiled deprecatingly. "I have a meeting

with some Americans this afternoon." .. She liked him. He had always

been kind to her, and she owed him her job at the museum. Most other men

in his position would have refused. Duraid's request for a female

assistant, especially his own wife.

He asked after her health and she showed him her bandaged arm. "The

stitches will come out in ten days."

They chatted for a while in a polite manner. Only Westerners would have

the gaucherie to come -directly to the main business to be discussed.

However, to save him embarrassment Royan took the first opportunity he

gave her to tell him, "I feel that I need some time to myself. I need to

recover from my loss and to decide what I am to do with the rest of my

life, now that I am a widow. I would be grateful if you would consider

my request for at least six months' unpaid leave of absence. I want to

go to stay with my mother in England."

Atalan showed real concern and urged her, "Please do not leave us for

too long. The work you have done has been invaluable. We need you to

help carry on from where Duraid left off." But he could not entirely

conceal his relief She knew that he had expected her to put before him

her application for the directorship. He must have discussed it with his

nephew. However, he was too kind a man to relish having to tell her that

she would not be selected for the job. Things in Egypt were changing,

women were emerging from their traditional roles, but not that much or

that swiftly. They both knew that the directorship must go to Nahoot

Ouddabi.

Atalan walked with her to the door of his office and shook her hand in

parting, and as she rode down in the lift she felt a sense of release

and freedom.

She had left the Renault standing in the sun in the Ministry car park.

When she opened the door the interior was hot enough to bake bread. She

opened all the windows and fanned the driver's door to force out the

heated air, but still the surface of the driver's seat burned the backs

of her thighs when she slid in behind the wheel.

As soon as she drove through the gates she was engulfed in the swarm of

Cairo traffic. She crawled along behind an overloaded bus that belched a

steady blue cloud of diesel fumes over the Renault. The traffic problem

was one that seemed to have no solution. There was so little parking

available that vehicles lined the verge of the road three and four

deep," choking the flow in the centre to a trickle.

As the bus in front of her braked and forced her to a halt, Royan smiled

as she recalled the old joke that some drivers who had parked at the