by Vivian Shaw
“You have someone here who can do the ceremonies properly?” Greta said, trying not to sound overexcited. The spells and blessings were the most difficult aspect of mummy health care: Nadezhda’s magic was better than nothing, but a properly trained and qualified priest would be ideal. “And who can do things like preparing that treatment dish properly before you put the patient’s lungs in? You’d have to have it inscribed with the correct spells and so on to mimic the protective effect of the canopic jar, of course, and it’s difficult to get them absolutely right.”
“Yes,” said Sister Brigitte, looking a little surprised—and pleased. “As it happens, our records clerk is a mummy who was a priest of Thoth once upon a time. We’re very fortunate to have Tefnakhte on staff; he knows all the spells and can pronounce things properly, he’s had his hands replaced so that he can do quite delicate inscriptions, and it’s such a reassurance to the patients to have one of their own involved in the magical side of things.”
Thoth, of course, was the scribe-god, also spelled Djehuty; Greta thought it was entirely fitting that a person sworn to the service of recording and measuring would end up in charge of a medical records office. Another thing they were doing right at Oasis Natrun.
She was trying quite hard not to smile like an idiot at the sheer excitement of being here—of getting to be part of this. It was difficult; her face already ached with the effort. The whole morning, so far, had been a series of delights: waking in the luxurious bed in her private residence, so unlike her flat in Crouch End, waking to find she was really still here and still in charge of Oasis Natrun for a whole four months; breakfast delivered to her door, exactly as she’d requested the night before; putting on the white coat with MEDICAL DIRECTOR embroidered on the left breast, settling into the office that was Ed Kamal’s but would belong to her for quite some time—all of it had made Greta want to hug herself with glee. And they had a mummy priest available, she’d be able to perform quite complicated operations without worrying about the spell-blessing aspect of things, and—oh, so many small but cumulative excitements.
Witnessing canopic teletherapy in action was absolutely fascinating; but she did have things to do. Beside her, Sister Brigitte discreetly checked her watch, and Greta straightened up. She could come back and visit Mr. Antjau’s lungs after she’d visited Mr. Antjau himself. They weren’t going anywhere without medical supervision.
Doing rounds briefly took Greta all the way back to medical school, years and years ago: that had been entirely different, a herd of medical residents trailing after the attending physician as they stalked through a ward from patient to patient. She’d realized quite quickly that she didn’t want to work in a hospital, even if she did stay with ordinary human medicine rather than following in her father’s footsteps: there was something unpleasantly impersonal about it, like an assembly line.
This was a much nicer kind of round. The spa had only seven patients; she didn’t have to hurry from one to the next. There was ample time to sit with each mummy, talk with them about their diagnoses and treatments, listen to their concerns. She had seen the resort patients first, needing to spend less time with them: Madame Bameket (here for the hot-sand-natron treatment as usual this time of year), Mr. Djedkare (cosmetic patient; total-body rewrap), and Ms. Mayet (here to relax and enjoy the luxurious service)—the latter only to introduce herself and let Ms. Mayet know that she was available for consultation if desired.
The clinical patients, Mr. Nesperennub (moderate-to-severe fungal infection), Ms. Nefrina (tendon replacement, both forearms and wrists), and Mr. Maanakhtef (comprehensive reconstruction of left foot), took up the rest of Greta’s day; Mr. Antjau was sleeping, and she had no desire to disturb him simply to say hello. Nesperennub had been very unwell indeed when he’d arrived last week, and the staff had taken one look at his cultures and got him straight to the linac room. Now he was just about ready to be discharged, spending another two or three days in the resort sector of the complex to get his strength back. Mummies were prone to fungal infections, especially in unsuitably damp climates: the ancient bandages offered a perfect breeding-ground for all sorts of opportunistic spores. Nefrina—who, like a lot of mummies, worked in IT—had had her left arm’s tendons replaced and was ready to undergo surgery for the right arm, which Greta was looking forward to almost as much as Nefrina was. “I can’t deal with not being able to type,” she’d said. “I want to get this over with,” and Greta had been able to reassure her that she’d be back up to seventy words per minute in a couple of weeks.
She saw Maanakhtef last. He was propped up on pillows in bed with his damaged foot resting on a cushion, loosely covered with a linen dressing, and smiled creakily to see Greta. “Come in, come in,” he said. “So you’re the Dr. Helsing we’ve all heard so much about.”
His accent was vaguely German; she thought probably he’d woken up in one of the museums there. “Hello,” she said, taking a seat by his bed. “It’s an enormous pleasure and a privilege to be here, and I hope I’ll not disappoint. I have Dr. Kamal’s notes, of course, but if you’d like to tell me about yourself…”
Mummies in Greta’s experience either absolutely loved to talk about themselves, particularly their myriad ailments, or clammed up like a sarcophagus at the slightest probe; luckily Maanakhtef was the former type. She was treated to a complex and detailed description of how he’d woken up to the modern world with his foot already in mediocre shape, the victim of poor embalming practices that had resulted in one foot being twisted under the other inside his bandaging; how he had tried to ignore it, the problem steadily worsening, and when he finally did seek medical help, “I was told there was nothing to be done; the bones were too badly damaged to repair, I would simply have to have the foot off.” It was difficult to tell through the wrappings, but Greta was good with mummy expressions by now, and she mirrored his look of horror.
“That’s dreadful,” she said. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. In my experience there is very rarely nothing that can be done; I’ve rebuilt at least one patient practically from a skeleton, and parts of that were missing. May I see your foot?”
He was clearly enjoying this. “By all means, Doctor.”
Underneath the loose dressing Greta could see why a less-experienced, or less-determined, clinician might have thrown up their hands in despair: four of Maanakhtef’s metatarsals, the long bones of the foot, were simply missing, the damage clearly visible due to a certain lack of skin coverage in the immediate vicinity. The remaining bone was cracked in several places and looked as if it was about to fall to powder at the lightest touch.
Greta put on gloves and took the magnifying-lens glasses out of her white coat’s pocket, turned on the little light attached to one bow. Through the lenses she could easily see the worn joint surfaces on the remaining bones of the foot, the residual deformation from all those centuries twisted at an unnatural angle. “Mm,” she said, gently tilting his foot from side to side, examining the damage. “Dr. Kamal’s notes say that he’s 3-D printed replacement bones for you?”
Maanakhtef was watching her, fascinated. “Yes,” he said, “only the surgery got put off because, well, apparently there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on my foot before the bones can go in, and they didn’t want to do it right away—that gentleman with the lung trouble was very bad, I gather, and took up lots of everybody’s time…”
Greta took off the glasses and looked up. She remembered Sister Brigitte, the previous evening, saying, You’ll see.
See what? Greta thought. Aloud she said, “There’s something else, isn’t there? I’m seeing a lot of damage here, but stabilization of the joints shouldn’t take very long at all if I use the right impregnating resins, and the new bones could go in as soon as—oh, call it the day after tomorrow, so there’s got to be another reason they put off doing it.”
Maanakhtef looked away: the little pinpoints of light that were his eyes, just visible behind the bandages, blinked on and off a
few times. Greta tilted her head. “Mr. Maanakhtef?”
“It’s… rather embarrassing, actually,” he said. “I’ve—only once or twice, it’s not as if it happens all the time—had these sort of attacks of weakness? It’s over very quickly, just a few moments of vertigo, and then I’m fine.”
Greta frowned, the differential-diagnostic part of her mind spinning up. “When did this start?”
“Not long ago. Since I’ve been here, about two and a half weeks.”
“Do you remember any kind of visual disturbances, sparkles or dark spots in your vision, or smelling anything strange just before one of the attacks?”
“No, not at all—they just sort of happen, out of nowhere. It feels as if I have no strength at all, and I’m extremely dizzy, and then it simply stops.”
“And afterward you feel all right?”
“Yes, absolutely,” he said, and then, “Well… perhaps a little tired and achy, but it’s difficult to tell.”
“I see,” said Greta. Which she didn’t, yet. “Well, it does make sense that Dr. Kamal didn’t want to do complicated surgery until we’ve worked out what’s causing these spells, but I think we can at least get started preparing your joint surfaces—that won’t be too uncomfortable for you, and we’ll be able to put your new bones in and get them all properly attached with tendon straps and everything as soon as possible.”
“Do you think I’ll be able to walk properly?” he said, sounding hopeful. By walk properly, he meant lurch from foot to foot with his arms held out in front of him, groaning.
“Absolutely,” said Greta. “I think once the physical therapy is over, you won’t need any sort of mobility aids at all, and your pain levels will be significantly reduced.”
She was going over all the potential causes for vertigo in the Class B revenant in her mind even as she patted Maanakhtef’s bandaged hand and stood. “Get some rest, all right? I’ll see you tomorrow, and we can get started on those joints.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” he said, and the depth of meaning in the words made her feel warm all over.
“It’s my pleasure,” she said again. “I mean that.”
“Yes,” he told her. “I can see you do.”
CHAPTER 4
Leonora Irene Van Dorne lived in one of the last remaining Beaux-Arts mansions in Lenox Hill that had escaped subdivision into apartments; it appeared in the archives of the Museum of the City of New York as simply the Van Dorne house, complete with ancient gelatin-silver photographs of the interior as it had been in 1900, cluttered with knickknacks and oppressive with velvet hangings and William Morris wallpaper. Ms. Van Dorne’s great-grandfather had built the house in the 1870s, and it had remained in the family ever since—although that venerable gentleman might not recognize it in its current state.
Ms. Van Dorne had turned it into a museum. A private one, to be sure, and one whose collection was among the most exquisite ever assembled. Other wealthy ladies of a certain age might collect porcelain, or David Hockney paintings; Ms. Van Dorne collected Egyptian antiquities, the rarer the better, and had them on display throughout her home. The cases which enclosed particularly valuable or delicate objects were custom-made for her by a company which did most of its work building bank vaults, but she was perhaps startlingly casual about her personal use of the objects that were sometimes stored within them. Particularly jewelry. This afternoon she had on part of a Middle Kingdom princess’s burial goods, an exquisite cloisonné-inlay pectoral. The tawny gold and bright blue, turquoise, and red of the stones stood out vividly against her dark grey cashmere twin-set.
She was sitting at her desk in the third-floor study, the curtains drawn, the bright clear light of her desk lamp the only illumination in the room. On a soft leather pad in front of her sat a partially unrolled papyrus, a section of it sandwiched between glass. Her fingertip traced the hieroglyphics written on the unrolled section out of habit alone: she knew these words by heart.
Also on the desk lay a small faience ushabti figure, shaped like a man standing with his arms crossed on his chest. Ms. Van Dorne had selected it from among a mixed lot of similar figures she had purchased from a dealer: they were far from rare.
The papyrus, though. That was rare. She had bought it in another mixed lot at auction in the spring, and had only gotten around to examining it properly two months ago; had she known what she had on her hands earlier, well—
—well, she’d have been willing to pay a great deal more for it, had she known.
That discovery had not quite been by accident. Ms. Van Dorne rarely dreamed, or rarely remembered dreaming, but one morning she’d woken with an astonishingly clear image in her mind: something important, something quite mind-blowing in its importance, in fact, hidden in the auction lot of papyri she was going through. In the dream she’d been here, in her study, looking down at the papyrus she had just unrolled, and the room had rustled and whispered with the sound of wings, although she’d been alone; she thought of the feather of Ma’at, the protective wings of painted goddesses guarding sarcophagi. She hadn’t been able to make out what was written on the papyrus, and the sense that it was of vast importance had stayed with her on waking; it was so strong, so compelling, that she went to look in the crate containing the auction lot to see if it was actually there.
The sight of it was a shock, a hot-cold adrenaline rush, both frightening and exciting; and when she very carefully unrolled it this time, déjà vu very strong now, remembering doing this in the dream, she could quite clearly read what it said.
It was unlike any other Egyptian text she’d ever seen, and she knew almost all of them, some by heart. It wasn’t part of the Book of the Dead, or any of the other commonly found texts she could recognize. It wasn’t an individual king or governor’s correspondence or edicts. It was—or it claimed to be—an entirely different kind of spell. O beautiful one, beloved of Ra, that liveth forever, and dieth not, whose beauty is eternal, thou dost renew thyself—
Ms. Van Dorne had read it several times, puzzling out the odd phrasing, and had thought for quite a long time before selecting a small artifact from among the less important contents of her collection. It had been a cosmetic box, alabaster but not beautifully carved, and missing its lid. It had worked well enough nonetheless, when she spoke the words of the spell out loud. It had worked very well indeed.
She looked down at the ushabti figure on the desk now and picked it up: held it in her hand, the way she had held that cosmetic box, feeling the solidity and hardness of it, the way in which it took up space. An object made for a purpose, in another time.
An object which would serve a purpose, if not perhaps its intended one.
Her manicured fingers closed more tightly around the little statue, and she smiled.
It was possible, Ruthven thought, to actually have enough of shopping. Difficult—his tolerances were extremely high—but possible. It helped not to have to carry bags, of course; he and Grisaille had arranged for the great many things they’d spent the past hours purchasing to be delivered to their hotel later, and they had in fact shopped their way along the entire length of the Via Condotti, which was not an inconsiderable feat. Perhaps it was understandable that Ruthven thought he’d done enough of it for the present.
Grisaille, however, still remained engrossed in Prada. Ruthven murmured to him and got a distracted nod; smiling fondly, he left him to it, and made his way out into the afternoon. It only occasionally occurred to him that he, Ruthven, had grown used to doing things as part of a couple, rather than forging through the world entirely on his own, attempting to entertain himself by throwing money around; the experience of shopping with someone, rather than all by himself, was just pleasing in a dim, comfortable sort of way. After so long alone he had slipped into the rhythm of a shared existence with barely any difficulty adjusting; it was as if he’d simply been waiting all that time for the individual person who quite precisely fit.
He sauntered across the plaza toward the Spanish Steps,
which really were as impressive as they looked in all the films. Ruthven was reminded of Montmartre, but the air was quite different; these stairs were the elegant side of baroque, a monument in themselves, curving and recurving in long elegant sweeps. He skirted the fountain in the middle of the plaza, and climbed partway up the lowest flight.
From here he could see directly down the whole length of the Via Condotti, ruler-straight, looking like an exercise in perspective drawing. Not for the first time Ruthven thought he actually owed the late and self-titled King of the Vampires something, after all: without all that business in Paris this spring, he would never have met Grisaille, and therefore would never have traveled to Rome; would not be standing here, with this incredible backdrop, looking, he knew, intensely stylish, and enjoying this view—
He was intensely stylish, and lots of people were looking at him, but suddenly he was very much aware of being watched. That crawling unease, out of nowhere.
Ruthven turned and found himself staring at someone all in grey: no, two someones, stalking rapidly toward him. Beautiful. Unearthly beautiful, all white curls and huge blue eyes, currently narrowed at him in an expression of violent hatred, which he couldn’t make sense of. He’d never seen them before, he would have remembered these two—he actually looked over his shoulder, in case they were storming toward somebody behind him, and this was a mistake because when he turned back, the first of them was right there, much too close to him.
“What—” he began, but the person shoved him hard in the chest with its bunched fingertips, saying something in a language Ruthven had never heard, and a kind of shock raced through him: his slow heart juddered briefly out of time, the tips of his fingers tingling. It lasted a fraction of a second before everything went back to normal; in fact, it was over so quickly, he wondered afterward if he’d actually felt it at all.
