Wrapped (17 page)

“That was before we knew how important this is!” he shot back. “You’re acting like it’s all some ruddy game!”

“I’m not!” But was I? No. I knew how grave things were. The affair had occupied my every thought for the last two days, and Caedmon with it.

I wished I could tell him how many times I’d thought of him since we’d last met. How he’d never left my mind as I rode home yesterday, as I spoke with David and saw so much of the passion and dignity that I admired in my brother reflected in him. If only he could know how often I’d remembered him last night as I walked with Showalter.

But putting it into words was the trick. How could I say all this without making it sound as if I had feelings for him?

Which I didn’t.

Or more to the point, which I shouldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally, reasoning a general apology was the only safe course.

He said nothing. I watched as the anger seemed to melt, giving way to only exhaustion.

“And I’m here now. Willingly . . .
dutifully
,” I said.

His shoulders relaxed a bit more. “What can I do?” I asked.

He sighed and started walking again, gesturing for me to follow. “I don’t know,” he said. “Until I started looking, I hadn’t truly reckoned how much we actually had.”

“How many items in the collection?”

He threw up his hands. “The catalogs are such a kettle of fish that it’s like trying to number the drunks along the Thames. They don’t lend themselves to lining up and being counted.”

We entered the great room with its sarcophagi.

“But if the object is meant to contain the standard somehow,” I ventured, “surely that rules out the smaller pieces.”

He nodded. “I suppose. But we don’t know its size, or how it could fit inside something else.”

I thought for a moment. “Couldn’t we focus on the displayed items only? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that the spies are familiar only with the limited items in these rooms?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t hold up. Especially if one of the conspirators is associated with the museum itself somehow.” He glanced toward the archway, then added, “Someone like Banehart.”

“I met him at a lecture once. Quite ghastly.”

Caedmon suppressed a smile. “Try working for him. He’s made no bones about his longings for peace with France and partnership to share the collections. Mind you, his only motivation is scientific. He’s got it in his head that if our collections are combined and our experts collaborate, we’ll work faster on translating the glyphs and finding new sites to excavate.”

I nodded, remembering that Showalter had said something like that last night. “You believe he’d sooner see England fly the flag of France than lose out on some trivia about a dead civilization?”

“Barmy, I know,” Caedmon said. “But if we’re to believe even a word about Wepwawet’s standard, Egyptology can hardly be considered trivial.”

“I only meant—”

“I know what you meant,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m tired, that’s all. And I’ve been shirking my other work since all this started.”

I felt horrid again for having abandoned him. “My brother would commend such sacrifice as honorable in a time of war,” I told him with a smile.

He almost laughed, then crossed his arms over his chest. “Pity we’re the only ones who know I’m sacrificing. My employers will only think I’m trigging it,” he said.

“When this is over and you’re discovered for the hero that you are, you can quit the lot of them and have your pick of positions at any Egyptological collection in all of England,” I tried to assure him.

He laughed. “The British Museum is the only one in the world with a collection like this.”

“Then you’ll start your own. You’ll make expeditions to Egypt, unlock the Rosetta Stone’s secrets; I’m sure Lord Showalter would happily throw piles of money your way.”

His smile faded. There was an awkward silence as we crossed the room and approached a door in the back bearing the words
STAFF ONLY
. I gave it a glance and followed him within.

“Where are we going?” I asked as we left behind the gleaming cases for a narrow hallway, crammed floor to ceiling with long drawers, a few spilling dusty corners of paper.

“Workroom,” he said. “You really shouldn’t be back here, but the bigwigs are in conference. Have to be quick, though. The bosses are meant to return by noon.”

I glanced at the clock. Twenty to twelve.

Caedmon led me through the passage, pointing toward a door indicating the offices. The hall spilled out into a great jumbled storage room of sorts. Urns of varying shapes and sizes grew like a dwarf forest across the floor. Canopic jars containing the pickled remains of the vital organs of Lord knew how many princes and kings, nobles and artisans lined bays of shallow shelves. Gold headpieces and masks littered a long table in the center of the room. A collection of long wooden staffs, many crooked at one end, stood like cut flowers in an old umbrella stand.

It was dim and quiet, the air cool and slightly damp, somehow stale and musty. And given the exotica of all the items that surrounded us, it was even easier to imagine what the interiors of one of the pyramids in Egypt might feel like than it was in the gallery.

A disembodied arm at least as tall as me and thicker at the wrist than I was at the waist sat like a fallen tree trunk beside the table. I reached down to stroke the gleaming granite shot through with pink glints.

“That’s Ramses II. His arm, anyway.”

I snatched my hand away, awed. “Ramses from the scriptures Ramses?”

Caedmon nodded and smiled. “Very good. The rest of him is fragmented outside his temple. This arm was the smallest of the pieces . . . only thing they could manage onto a boat. Weighs nearly a ton.”

“Fascinating,” I said, imagining how grand the complete statue might have been. And yet . . . I couldn’t help but think it seemed a pity to dismantle something so magnificent.

“Moving the big’uns has always been the puzzle,” Caedmon told me, walking toward a row of sarcophagi neatly lined up like runners about to begin a footrace.

I joined Caedmon, reaching out to stroke the painted and gilt interior of one elaborate coffin leaning against the shelf. Its surface warm and rough to the touch, unlike the smooth chill of the stone. I hadn’t expected that.

“That one’s wooden. Cedar, actually,” Caedmon explained. “Queer for its time. Over three thousand years old. Lumber of any quality greater than palm had to be imported from Lebanon, so masonry and marble work were the order of the day. But the craftsmanship here is tip-top.”

I nodded. “It’s very beautiful.”

“Should be,” he said. “According to the markings, it once bore the body of one of the pharaoh’s favorite concubines. Upon his death, she consented to have herself killed and mummified to make the journey to the afterlife at his side.”

“How awful,” I said. “I can’t imagine having to make such a decision.”

Caedmon shrugged. “If she’d refused, they’d probably have had her killed anyway. This way at least she was guaranteed an afterlife. Women didn’t have a lot to say about anything.”

“Still don’t.” I knew women whose husbands died and left them with daughters and no sons. Their homes and property were taken and entailed away to some nephew, the poor women given meager allowances and forced to shove off. As if even the law decided you might as well be dead if your husband went first.

“But look at this. The wood wrights were apparently ordered to protect her body from grave robbers, so they did something I’d not seen before,” Caedmon said as he closed the lid, the casket wobbling slightly. It gave a soft click as he pushed it home, the seam between the door and the box almost completely disappearing. On the surface, I could plainly see the outline of a woman, dark kohl eyes staring demurely to the left.

“Why isn’t she looking straight on like the others?” I asked.

“They would have placed her next to her king so she could gaze at him for all eternity.”

I found the notion curiously nauseating and romantic at the same time.

“But see here,” he said, taking my hand and placing it on the edge of the door. A warm sensation spread out over my arm.

He didn’t seem to notice. “Go on, open it,” he urged.

I tried to wedge my fingertips into the spot where I thought the edge of the door should be. I pulled. It didn’t budge. Then I applied both hands and pulled even harder.

“It’s stuck.”

He grinned, enjoying this game. “They were about to take a pry bar to it when I convinced them to give me a go. I reckoned the fact that it was made of wood had to mean something. And the only other bits of wood we see through here are curio boxes.”

“You mean like a puzzle box?”

“Spot on. We don’t have many examples, owing to the fact that the wood rots a sight quicker than stone. But knowing the Egyptians were keen on them made me wonder if this”—he ran a hand along the box’s edge—“might be built along the same lines.”

“And you were correct?”

He lifted a shoulder modestly. “After a bit of trial and error, I managed to lick it.”

He crouched down, slid the feet over, pushed the entire piece down half an inch, and then stood.

“Mind you, this was done strictly in the name of science,” he said, blushing, as he reached out and pushed the left breast sideways. It slid open to reveal a small recessed panel with a wooden tab. Caedmon pushed this tab, producing the same click I’d heard earlier when the lid shut tight. He then lifted it open, revealing the inside once again.

“Bravo!” I applauded quietly.

He laughed and stepped back, admiring the casket.

“Can it be opened from the inside?” I asked.

He shook his head. “They didn’t figure she’d be letting herself out.”

“Do you have the king’s sarcophagus?”

“Here,” he said. At the end of the row an enormous stone box lay on the floor. Its lid sat a few feet away, leaning against the wall.

“Are you sure he didn’t take another of his concubines in there with him?” I asked, marveling at the size.

Caedmon laughed. “He was gone before we got the sarcophagus. But his sweetheart is on the display floor now.”

“I wonder if she was as beautiful as the markings indicated,” I mused, looking back at the puzzle box.

“She wasn’t to my tastes,” he said dryly.

Could the way he avoided my eyes as he said this indicate what I thought it might? Was he actually paying me a compliment?

He stepped away quickly and looked around the room. “I’ve hunted back here and on the floor, but nothing’s turned up. A thorough search would take months, maybe even longer since I have to sneak about to do it.”

“I’ll help,” I offered again.

He shook his head. “I only have the run of this place when the senior staff has meetings.”

“But they’re not here at night, are they?”

He shrugged. “Not as late as I am, usually. After hours is the only time I can devote myself to that,” he said, pointing toward a display table on which lay what looked like a giant rock, broken jagged at the edges, but polished to gleaming on a surface etched with tiny characters.

“The Rosetta Stone!” I cried, rushing forward. In size, the Stone looked like it could have been a grave marker from Westminster Abbey. Nearly a foot thick, and probably at least up to my shoulder if it were standing on its end. The Stone was so dark that it seemed to pull the light toward itself, like water slipping toward a drain.

“A damned puzzle,” he said, though with greater affection than the oath indicated.

It wasn’t beautiful, yet it was attractive—magnetic, even. I couldn’t resist touching it. “Imagine what it must have been like when it was actually in use,” I mused. “Don’t you wish you could go there? See things like this where they were made? See the people? Hear the language? The music? Eat the dates and figs and . . .”

I stopped and looked up to find him staring at me, smiling.

“Pardon,” I said. “I find myself carried away.”

“No!” he said quickly. “So do I. Sometimes when I’m working on the beast I think about what she might have looked like whole and proud, and I think that maybe some man like me might have leaned up against her side to take a rest. And I can almost feel the heat from the sun rising off the surface, like the kissing crust when a loaf is drawn from an oven. . . .”

I gaped at him, realized that there was someone as wistful as I was, someone as desperate to see someplace else.

“Someday I’ll go,” he said, without taking his eyes from the Stone.

I spoke without thinking. “I believe you will.”

He smiled, a bit sadly, as if he thought he had less chance of realizing this hope than I did. Perhaps he did. I cleared my throat and leaned over the Stone.

“Here’s the demotic, and these must be the hieroglyphs,” I said, letting my fingers float above the upper portion bearing the pictographs. I peered closer at the middle section and squinted in the low light. “I’d forgotten it had Greek inscribed on it!” I said, delighted.

Caedmon smiled. “Most people are surprised to find it there.”

I began to read the text aloud. “‘In the fourteenth year of Ptolemy . . .’”

“You can read Greek?”

“Read, yes. Speak, I’m not so sure.”

Now Caedmon was impressed.

“But I presume I’m not the only one who can read the Greek. And if the demotic and the Greek say the same thing, doesn’t it stand to reason that the glyphs are a direct translation?” I asked.

“Picture writing is far more nuanced than written script. More than half the population couldn’t read. Hieroglyphs were like pub signs or signal flags, almost. And adding them up together is the difficult part. On top of that, there appear to be slight but significant variations between the Greek and demotic texts,” he explained.

“Didn’t you say that the Ptolemy referenced on the Stone is the very one who last bore the standard before it disappeared?”

He nodded.

“Then the Stone might contain some clue to finding it?”

He shrugged. “That’s what I’ve been trying to work out, but . . .”

“Is Wepwawet mentioned in the demotic or Greek texts?”