The Buried Pyramid (63 page)

“I’m better at drawing than modeling,” Jenny apologized as she joined Stephen, Lady Cheshire, and Mrs. Syms. “What do we do?”

She stopped and took another look at the two women. “First thing I’m going to do is rebandage your arm, then take a look at the dressing on Sarah’s collarbone.”

“Thank you,” Lady Cheshire said simply. “Stephen, the book you loaned me contained some sections from the
Book of the Dead.
I thought I saw one for enchanting shabti figures. Can you find that passage and adapt it to our needs?”

“Gladly,” Stephen said.

“What are we going to do, Audrey?” Mrs. Syms asked.

“After Miss Benet finishes checking our bandages, we are going on the shore to make mud figures,” Lady Cheshire told her. “We can’t be too fancy about this,” she said when they had all stepped ashore, and a convenient deposit of sticky mud had been located. “How many oarsmen do we need?”

Jenny had counted when they were rowing, wishing then that some of Ra’s usual companions would show up and fill the empty benches.

“Six to a side,” Jenny said, “if none of us take seats.”

“I think we should remain free to do other things, if needed,” Lady Cheshire said. “Very well, first we need twelve human figures. They needn’t be large.”

“They’ll be awfully soft,” Jenny said, digging out a wet lump with her fingernails.

“I thought,” Lady Cheshire said, almost shyly, “that we would ask Ra to bake them for us. If he cannot, we will need to settle for air-drying, but that will take more time.”

Sarah Syms was already making a nice little mud doll about six inches tall.

“Good thing they don’t need to be life-sized,” Jenny asked.

“Indeed.” Lady Cheshire glanced at her once well-tended hands with a slight sigh, then dug into the mud with a will, if not with enthusiasm. “The ones in the tombs were not—not usually, at least.”

Stephen looked up from his reading and started taking notes. He glanced over at them, and said, “Incise each figure with the ankh for life, the Eye of Horus for protection, and then number each one in order. Lady Cheshire, do you recall Egyptian numbers?”

“The lower ones, yes,” she responded, “and the determinative for hundreds and thousands and such.”

“Then label each with a hieroglyph between one and twelve,” Stephen said. “Might as well be purists. Finish them off with something green—sticking a bit of leaf into the mud should do it. Green’s the color of life and strength, as I recall.” He briefly flashed an enthusiastic grin, then returned to his scribbling.

The dozen mud figures were soon completed, inscribed, and equipped with oars—more like broad-bladed paddles to Jenny’s way of thinking. They wore tidy little loincloths cut from a flexible leaf. Mrs. Syms had insisted in adding hair and facial features, using a stick as a stylus. A couple of broad, thick leaves served as trays to move the completed figures without offering too much damage to the soft clay.

“Ra?” Lady Cheshire said with more hesitation than Jenny had ever heard from her. “Could you . . . uh . . . bake these?”

Ra blinked, then looked at the shabti figures. For a moment, Jenny thought he might refuse. Then he raised his hands and held one over each of the leaf trays. There was a wash of heat, so intense that Jenny’s hands rose to cover her eyes of their own volition. When she lowered them, the leaves had been burnt to ash, though the deck beneath them was untouched. The twelve clay figures remained as well, but they hadn’t merely been baked; they had been transformed.

Each little man was now shiny reddish-brown, polished and glazed. The leaf ornamentation shown like opaque glass or even emerald. The hieroglyphs were incised into the figures with a fine tracery of gold. The figures’ features were more human now—no longer the pinching of a nose, or a mere line to suggest eye or hair, but tidy, realistic sculptures. The paddles they carried, which before had been rough approximations, whittled out by Jenny with her Bowie knife from a portion of splintered planking, were now elegantly curved, with a smoothed haft where the paddler’s hand would rest, and a sturdy, leaf-shaped blade.

When Stephen saw the completed shabti figures, his mouth dropped open in surprise.

“My spell isn’t going to match your modeling,” he said with sincerity. “I’ve adapted the verse from the
Book of the Dead,
removing references to service in the afterlife. Hopefully, it will do.”

Lady Cheshire looked at the figures, then over at Ra, who sat, eyes closed, hand gently stroking Mozelle.

“I think it had better. Ra doesn’t look at all well. I think he needs to reach the east.”

Stephen cleared his throat. “You may be right. Gather round, all, and take a look at this.”

The three women did so, Mrs. Syms with the air of one being invited to take part in a particularly amusing party game.

Jenny read silently the words on the page,

Oh Shabti, created by me, joyful in service,

arise at my call, heed my commands,

know full well the task given to you,

even as does the seasoned laborer.

When I call upon you, rise up, take your place.

Say when I call, “Here I am.”

Lady Cheshire nodded, finished her own reading, and said, “Shall we recite it together, each of us holding three of the shabti figures?”

“Holding hands over them, rather,” Stephen suggested. “Better not to be touching them, just in case.”

Crowding together to use Stephen’s crib, they recited the words. Jenny had to fight the urge to look over at Ra—and the increasingly unfathomable Mozelle. If either looked in the least mocking, she knew she’d falter, and a cat could look mocking without even trying.

Then Jenny felt the deck tremble, felt something brush against her fingertips, and forgot about feeling foolish. She moved the hand she held over her three shabti figures, then she jerked it aside as she might have from a burning stove.

The shabti were growing, shifting muscles under reddish-brown skin, moving heads slowly side to side, rolling neck muscles, testing the curl of arms and fingers. Jenny thought she should be growing accustomed to wonders, but from the way her heart was beating against her ribs, she knew she had not.

She quickly stepped back a pace. She knew that when she said the final lines—
“When I call upon you, rise up, take your place. Say when I call, ‘Here I am.’ ”
—the shabti figures would indeed rise.

The dozen figures stood as one, not mere clay figures any longer, but neither breathing nor truly alive. Their eyes were liquid and moving, but they did not blink. Their hair fell silken to their shoulders, but did not shift in the breeze. When the recitation was concluded, their lips moved and a dozen voices said as one: “Here I am.”

Stephen mastered himself first. He’d clearly been thinking about what would be needed if the spell actually worked.

“Take your paddles, men. You know your names, for they are graven into your hearts. Go to the seats in the order of those names: front to back in ascending order, divided with odd number to the port, even to starboard.”

And as if these directions were another form of spell, the shabti figures moved to the places indicated. Number One sat in the foremost bench on the left, Number Two on the foremost bench to the right. Their fellows ranked themselves in order behind them.

Uncle Neville spoke, his voice filled with wonder.

“You’ve found us a crew. I can hardly believe it. Jenny, can you take the late Captain Brentworth’s post at the stern? I’ll watch from what’s left of the bow, and Rashid can take my place here.”

Jenny nodded, walking carefully so as not to tread in the still drying marks left by the captain’s blood. She grasped the poles that controlled the rudders.

“Ready, Uncle Neville.”

“Rowers, forward,” came Sir Neville’s voice, not quite certain, but willing to try accepting this latest impossibility. “We’re going to this river’s end. We’re taking Ra to where he can ascend again into the sky.”

“And the rest of us?” Lady Cheshire said, speaking very carefully, as if she suspected she would not like the answer. “Will the rest of us ascend to the sky?”

Ra answered, “You did not come here seeking the sky, Audrey. You came here seeking the good king, Neferankhotep. It is before him you shall go. I believe he has some questions for you all.”

23

Negative Confessions

Ra’s words rung like a pronouncement of doom. Neville had no doubt that even Jenny—the least schooled in Egyptology of them all, unless one counted Rashid, and Neville had no idea what the Arab youth knew or did not know—understood perfectly what the hawk-headed figure had meant. One could not travel up the Nile, touring temple and tomb alike, and not grasp some basic tenets of Egyptian belief.

In the afterlife, if one passed trial before Maat—and Neville had no doubt that Neferankhotep had passed such judgment with ease—the pharaoh became as one with Osiris. Osiris was judge of the dead, though not the only judge, and Neville realized his hand was shaking as he recalled depictions of some of those other judges.

This can’t be real!
he thought with desperation, but he knew it was. Robert Brentworth was dead, impaled on the fang of a serpent who might otherwise have swallowed the sun. The kitten Jenny had rescued had grown larger than the serpent, and Neville’s own boots were stained with the blood of impossible snakes and of crocodiles who had attacked with the determination of men.

If this isn’t reality,
Neville thought, determinedly silencing the nagging inner voice,
it’s a forgery of which God Almighty could be proud. My only other choice is joining Mrs. Syms, and making pretend that we’re punting along the Thames or the Severn, doubtless stopping for lunch along the way. I’ll settle for unreality, if my only other choice is insanity.

Stephen seemed to have arrived at some similar conclusion, for he addressed Ra almost conversationally as they followed the hawk-headed man onto the shore.

“I say, Mr. Ra, I don’t expect that you’d be able to put in a good word for us, would you? We’ve done our best by you at least.”

“Certainly, the deeds of the end of a life weigh against the crimes done earlier,” Ra agreed, “but the final judge is Maat. Is your soul as light as the feather of truth and justice? If so, then you should have no concern about what comes after.”

Stephen looked troubled.

“I always thought of truth as a heavy thing indeed,” he replied slowly, “since people have so much trouble continuing to carry it. And justice is a slippery concept. I’m not sure that what Eddie’s religion considers justice is the same as what mine does. Are such differences in interpretation taken into account, Ra?”

“Ask Osiris,” Ra said, “when you reach the halls of judgment.”

Ra’s next words were spoken in a language Neville did not understand, but in response the shabti figures shipped their oars and the Boat of Millions of Years glided up to the river bank.

“Here is where I change boats,” Ra said, almost conversationally, “and we part company. You may stay on this riverbank, but I should warn you—it remains Apophis’s country, and he will not think kindly of you after what you have done. Through those doors is the Hall of Judgment. I suggest you pass through them. Even Ammit’s jaws would be kinder than what Apophis and his children will do if they catch you.”

Neville looked. Two enormous double doors stood where Ra had indicated—and where Neville was absolutely certain nothing had been before. They stood twice as high as a grown man and were intricately inscribed with hieroglyphs. Both the doors and the building into which they led were oddly shaped, the doors having a peculiar curve to their top and the building being quite narrow in comparison to its length.

Didn’t I read somewhere that the Hall of Judgment was supposed to be shaped like a gigantic sarcophagus?
Neville thought.
That would account for the oddities of that structure—the doors are where the feet would be.