To add to the curiosity, the well was nowhere near deep enough to reach water. It was only about thirty feet to where he stood. Wells often had to be hundreds of feet deep. He eyed the bulge in the center. The story told in the well was not what he had expected. Why were there seven corpses in a room just visible from the lip? Where was the machinery he had heard in the memories? He shook his head and sighed.
“Throw down the ropes,” he called up. The ropes thumped to the sand in the center. The sound from before did not repeat. He stretched from where he stood and grasped the rope. One of the other men in the well, an Egyptian that had taken pictures with a camera slung on a lanyard around his neck, grabbed the other rope. They both stepped toward the center, and felt it sink. Jonas jumped back as the Egyptian man tried to jump upward and grasp the rope higher. He slipped and fell back onto the sand as it collapsed. The man didn’t even cry out as he disappeared into the darkness below.
The sand under his feet started to shift, then slide. Jonas yelped and grabbed onto the rope once more. He swung out over the opening chasm below. The floor had been a cap of sand that had solidified over the years. The central opening was larger than the shaft above, measuring almost ten feet across. He looked down and whimpered. A glowstick slid across the sand and into the pit, falling for a very long time. It eventually grew too dim to make out anymore.
“Can you please pull me up?” He shouted above. He could hear the panic in his voice. His hands hurt from gripping the rope. He hadn’t had the time to tie a knot around himself. His muscles bulged as he held on. While he had gained strength in the last three months, he still wasn’t strong enough to climb the smooth rope without help. He looked at the other two men in the room. One reached out a hand, but the gap was too large for them to reach across. They stood near the bodies on a two-foot ledge. Three of the corpses had fallen into the pit as the sand drained.
The rope slipped a foot and he cried out in fright. He could feel the icy fingers of Death reaching out for him.
“Help me, please!” He shouted.
A mighty roar of men working together sounded from above, and he was yanked upwards by a yard. His knuckles had turned white with the effort to keep himself alive. His arms started going numb from lack of blood flow. The rope surged another yard, then another. A voice sounded from above.
“Get him up here!”
“Professor Calhoun?! Is that you?” A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and into his right eye, stinging and causing him to blink rapidly.
“Yes, Quartermain. Hold on, you’re nearly out,” came the muffled reply. The rope continued to move in spurts. Calhoun leaned over the lip of the well and extended his arm. It was out of his reach. Jonas’ left hand slipped from the rope and he cried out again.
“Don’t you go dying on me now! You’ve got so much left to do,” Calhoun growled. Then he turned back to someone outside the well and shouted an order in Arabic. Jonas was yanked up again, which nearly caused him to lose his grip. He reached up for Calhoun’s hand. Fatigue dragged him down, and his hand felt like it was tearing apart. Calhoun returned and extended an arm. They clasped wrists, and he was pulled up with surprising strength.
“I’ve got you, boy.”
49
Jonas lay sprawled on the ground, heaving great gasping breaths. His hands burned from gripping the rope so tightly. When he looked at his left, it looked like raw hamburger to him. He turned his head aside and dry heaved at the sight.
“Easy boy. Let me see.” Calhoun took his hand and examined it. “Just some rope burn. You’ll be fine in a few days. We’ll get it bandaged up.”
“I almost died,” he said in a half-sob.
“With the changes you’ve gone through in the last three months, I thought you were in better shape. You certainly look stronger than when we first arrived. While not necessarily a necessity for the average archaeologist, you seem to get yourself into all sorts of situations that require better health. You should work on that, Quartermain. Let’s go to the first aid tent and get your hand wrapped.” When he was satisfied with Jonas’ condition, he turned and addressed the translators standing nearby. “Get body retrieval kits for the corpses still in sight. Drop more glowsticks to see how deep the well is, then figure out if we can retrieve the bodies and photographer that fell.”
The translators began giving orders as Calhoun helped Jonas to his feet. He led the way through the marketplace, up the sloping sands, and to a tent not far off. While they walked, Jonas thought hard about the coincidence of his professor being present just when he was needed.
“Professor Calhoun, what are you doing here?”
“Jenkins brought me in as your backup a few days ago. I took over while you were off partying in Cairo,” Calhoun responded dryly.
“I wasn’t partying, I was getting more answers,” he replied.
“When I arrived here, the men were partying. Something you’re responsible for, I’m sure.” Calhoun held open the tent flap for him. They entered the brightly lit room.
“I did ask for a party for the men. They needed a break. In any case, I was looking for more information. I tried finding a tablet at the museum I saw on our first visit,” Jonas started.
“What tablet?”
“The Murdus tablet, the one you donated.” Jonas took a seat as he was directed, then held his still bleeding hand out to his professor.
Calhoun nodded. “Learn anything useful?”
“No, it was stolen last week.”
“The tablet was?” Calhoun started by applying rubbing alcohol to the wound. Jonas jumped and hissed through his teeth at the pain.
“Yeah,” he grunted out a moment later. “Someone broke into the museum and took it.”
“That is usually implied by ‘stolen’. Did they find out who?”
“No, and there was no evidence. Well, a drop of blood, I guess, but what good is that?” He clenched up as Calhoun ran an alcohol-soaked rag over the bloody flesh. A growl escaped his lips.
“Easy boy. You’ll be fine in a minute.” He pulled the gauze out and started to wrap Jonas’ hand.
“So, yeah, it was kind of a bust at the museum.”
“Sir, sir!” Another voice broke into their conversation from outside the tent. It was one of the translators. They sounded familiar to Jonas, but he couldn’t readily tell the difference between each of the men that could speak English.
“You must come quickly! We have found another body!”
“That’s a lot of excitement for a body,” Calhoun stated dryly as he finished wrapping.
Jonas looked at his bandaged hand, then back up to his mentor. He started to open his mouth.
“Yes, Mister Quartermain. We should go take a look.” Calhoun dusted his hands off then stood. He led the way to the tent flap and held it open for Jonas. He flexed his hand, testing his ability to use it. The bandages were thick enough to impede use at the very least. One loop hung a little from his hand. He closed his fist and followed Calhoun out.
Outside stood a young Egyptian man, so excited he hopped from one foot to the other as he waited for them. They followed the excited teen to the palace. The crew had started extracting sand from the throne room and found a body. It lay ten feet inside the entry. Sand had been blown in around the door over time, as well as through cracks worn through the windows. The piles were not as big as Jonas had expected.
“Here, this is what you must see,” said the young man. Jonas nodded, but Calhoun spoke first.
“Thank you, young man. Please let us examine it in peace.”
The young man stopped hopping around, stunned into silence. He looked back and forth between the body and the two men leading the dig. Then he jerkily turned and walked with his shoulders slumped out of the building. He took the diggers with, and they stood at the threshold to the palace, looking on from afar.
Jonas knelt next to the skeleton. The fabric had long ago worn away, leaving little but a skeleton clad with jewelry. It lay on its back, a
rms crossed over where its abdomen would have been. Jewelry decorated the body from head to toe. It had dozens of rings, half a dozen bangles and bracelets on each arm, a torque on the right upper-arm, bangles on the ankles, a collar around the throat, and a crown clutched in its right hand. A wig lay rotted on the floor next to the head of the corpse.
“This is a red crown. It looks like a deshret… there has never been a deshret found before. They were probably handed down from king to king, instead of buried. I can’t believe the luck! As for the body, the bones have been scoured clean,” Jonas said as he began his examination. “It looks like the throne room wasn’t as good at preserving the body as the well. Bones have been bleached white, though likely from the sand. I don’t think there’s been sun in here since the building was abandoned.”
Calhoun nodded, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He nodded at the corpse, but didn’t say anything. Jonas continued his investigation, noting it was diminutive, small even by Ancient Egyptian standards. The person would have stood at perhaps four-foot-nine. Wider hips and narrower shoulders led Jonas to a conclusion.
“The hips, with the shoulders and narrow jaw indicate this was a woman.”
“Very good, Mister Quartermain. What else can you see?” Asked Calhoun. He watched with interest as Jonas continued his inspection.
“There’s a lot of jewelry, so she was likely royalty, or at least a treasured concubine. There’s a collar made from what looks like gold with inset stones. A half-dozen bangles on her right arm. Another five or six on the left. One of them looks like it might actually be two. They all look to be made from precious metals, like gold, but there’s one on the left arm that looks like it might be made from iron. I’m going to try a closer examination.”
Jonas gently tried moving the left hand to look at the second bangle on her arm, and the brittle bones broke away.
He sighed. “I swear, I am awful at this. I keep breaking mummies.”
“Keep going. I would prefer you not destroy such monumental finds, but these things can happen if you aren’t careful.”
Jonas nodded, then put the bones down next to the arm. The first bangle on her arm touched his hand, and he felt a surge of something, like a memory that wanted to overwhelm him. He made a split-second decision, not entirely certain why he did. He tucked the bangle into the loose fold of the bandage on his left hand. He leaned in while closing his left fist to disguise the lump in the wrap.
“It looks like she suffered multiple broken bones around when she died.” He looked over the arms and legs first, noting multiple fractures on her left arm, another on her left ankle. Then he moved his attention to her ribcage. “Here it is. She was stabbed in the heart.”
“What makes you say that?” Asked Calhoun. He found a flashlight nearby and shone the bright light on the area Jonas indicated.
“It looks like a blade of some kind was pushed between her ribs, right here,” he said as he pointed. “Between the fourth and fifth ribs, with a notch in the sternum. Pierced her heart. She would have died quickly.”
“Very good, Mister Quartermain. It is a pity we don’t know why she was stabbed. Royalty being killed like that was an uncommon occurrence. Especially in Egypt. Is there anything else we can assume from the scene?” Calhoun moved around, looking over Jonas’ shoulder as he spoke. He appeared to be looking for something, though Jonas had no idea what.
“Well, this is likely the palace of… of the Pharaoh that was entombed in the pyramid a few miles from here.”
“Atakheramen,” Calhoun said casually. Jonas cringed, then looked around. When nothing happened, he relaxed slowly.
“Uh, yeah. Him. Therefore, we can make a somewhat educated guess that this woman was either a wife or concubine to… him.”
“Excellent. I believe that is all we’ll get from this scene for now. Let’s get a tarp over the body and let the diggers continue excavating the outside of the palace. We’ll investigate the rest of the interior when the lights are ready.” The flashlight moved away from the body and to the men at the entrance. Calhoun called out in Arabic, and the men sprang into action. A few minutes later, a crude scaffold had been built around the body and a tarp draped over top. Jonas and Calhoun left the palace, walking slowly toward the tent that housed the makeshift cafeteria.
“I could do with some coffee,” Jonas sighed. He wiped his right hand over his face, leaving streaks of dirt behind. Calhoun chuckled quietly at the sight, but did nothing to correct it.
“Sure. I’ll buy the first cup.”
“It’s free for us,” Jonas said in confusion.
“Exactly.” He replied in mirth. They arrived at the tent and went inside. Sand still crunched underfoot, but the tent was sturdy and well lit. A man stood behind a table draped with cloth and set up with a variety of easy-to-make foods. Behind him sat a glass coffee pot. It was burbling away, making a fresh pot.
“Two coffees, black,” Calhoun said as he held up two fingers on his right hand. The man nodded, poured two cups into dented metal mugs, and handed them over. Calhoun accepted them with a nod, then led Jonas over to a table. Jonas took his gratefully, wrapping his hands around the warm metal.
“It’s not cold here,” Calhoun observed.
“It’s a comfort thing. There’s so much going on here, something familiar just feels nice.”
“You have a point. Not many people your age, especially with your background, have flown before. Never mind going to a different continent, twice, for work, before even graduating college.”
Jonas nodded mutely. He knew how lucky he was, yet it still felt off. He sipped at his coffee, burning his lip in the process.
“Relax, kid. You’re doing a great job. Sure, you took off for a few days to ‘find evidence’, and you have destroyed a few priceless bodies, but the dig is coming along well. Look at how much your team has discovered in the last few weeks.”
Steam drifted up from the cup, carrying with it the smell of strong coffee. Jonas closed his eyes and inhaled the scent. He nodded, and finally spoke.
“Yeah. I wish I understood why the bodies crumbled like that. I know mummies are fragile, but they shouldn’t crumble to dust when bumped.”
Calhoun shook his head. “That is a mystery to me as well. Perhaps once in a Department of Acquisitions lab, they can identify a reason for their fragile state.”
The bangle was forefront in his mind. He had taken it, something ethically and professionally wrong, but his instincts told him he needed it in his hand. The feeling was inexplicable but firm. He had to have it. Knowing he had stolen the bracelet made him nervous around his mentor. He looked deep into the coffee for inspiration, trying to find a way out of the awkward conversation.
“I have a feeling we’ve found almost everything there is to find here,” Calhoun said. Jonas was startled out of his reverie. “Of course, we’ll need to stick around for a while yet to make sure, but I think the bodies, if they can be recovered, will make fine additions to the museum exhibit. Then there’s the bracelets, collars, and normal life-style detritus around the village. Your team found the well, though we have no idea how they gathered water, especially enough to satisfy the full populace.”
“That is weird. I wonder if maybe there were more wells,” Jonas idly mused. He knew, of course, thanks to the memories that there were six more.
Calhoun shook his head. “I doubt it. The way the buildings look, it was abandoned long before the palace was. Why else would we have not found more corpses?”
“The Germans came through here forty years ago.”
His mentor nodded. “I think they took everything else. It’s quite the stroke of luck that you found anything at all after they came through.”
“What does that mean for us?” He fidgeted with his coffee mug as he asked. The man across from him made him nervous all the time, a feeling that had grown more intense in recent weeks.
“Probably another week. We have to dot the ‘t’s and cross the ‘i’s, after all,” Calhou
n said with a small wink.
“Professor, did you just crack a joke?”
“Absolutely not. Don’t be foolish. You look quite tired as well. Perhaps you should take a nap. I can handle everything around the camp for an hour.” Calhoun tossed back the last of his coffee and stood.
“Oh, uh, thanks Professor.”
50
Jonas sat in his tent at his desk, stolen bangle in hand. He turned it over and over, mesmerized. It was a gold bangle with hieroglyphs carved on the surface. Cuneiform writing was inscribed inside, and a large ruby was set in the center. The ruby was exquisitely cut, a feat for the crude tools used by modern standards. The jewel would have contacted the skin of the wearer. Jonas puzzled out the hieroglyphs on the band, drawing them on a piece of paper and translating as he went.
‘For everlasting love in this and the next life.’
He pondered the message for ten minutes. Then, without really knowing why, he put the bracelet on. It barely fit over his hand and wrist, though it seemed to stretch a little as he put it on. When it settled in place, the ruby dug into the skin of his wrist and he was overcome by a vision.
Atakheramen looked down at a tiny woman. She had striking features; an angular jaw and high cheek bones, and dainty pointed ears. Her hair was glossy black and extended well past her waist. She smiled up at him, her hands in his.
She hadn’t always smiled at him. She had been a captured slave from a nearby kingdom. Her beauty had captured him from the start. He had released her from slavery, then all her countrymen. They had been invited to stay in the city. When she accepted, his heart had soared. He had been alone for ten years. The ritual had changed him, and he hadn’t taken a consort in the time since.
It had taken a year of small gifts, of making time for her. The process had challenged him. He wasn’t used to being rebuffed. So, when she finally accepted his offer of marriage, he had danced with joy.
Rakitaki: A Jonas Quartermain Adventure Page 35
