The Emerald Embrace

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  Since this morning the chamber had been cleared of all implements left by Guzman, and three rusty dark stains, the blood of Uisha, Rais Guzman and Ismael, who had been killed by the second gunshot, had settled into porous limestone.

  Through my headache came the sound of my escort’s receding footsteps.

  Ibraham was watching me with his kind round eyes, so like Lullah Zuleika’s, and Ahmed stared at me with grave reproach. I had let him and the Enlightened Ones down. I faced the Pasha.

  At last he spoke. “I divorce thee,” he said hoarsely. “I divorce thee. I divorce thee.”

  “My master,” said the eunuch vizier, “you have said the words in front of two witnesses. You are no longer husband and wife.”

  “Thank you,” the Pasha retorted. “Now go tell Commodore Delaplane he may come.”

  The two bowed, and then we were alone, the ruler of Egypt and Liberty Moore, surrounded by paintings of Nefer and Thutmose.

  “Naksh, you look drugged.”

  “I … I have a sudden headache.”

  “There’s no need to worry,” he said. “You’re free now. Isn’t that why you returned to Egypt?”

  “Not truly. Pasha, I wanted to make restitution to you.”

  “Oh, you explained that most clearly this morning, Naksh, my pet. There I was doing my best to conceal the fact that you were my runaway kadine, the wife of my bosom who had absented herself so suddenly, and there you were, earnestly explaining to me and everyone that you knew my goals and hopes for the country.”

  My headache began to abate. “I wanted to make sure you understood.”

  “I’m not stupid, Naksh, I realized what was on your mind.” Suddenly his eyebrow rose playfully and he chuckled. “What I cannot figure is how you got set on such a crazed idea.”

  “Restitution’s older than your legal code, and—well, Stephen thought of it first, but I agreed with him. If we gave you something of great worth, you’d be freed of needing to punish us.”

  “The guilty flee where no man pursueth,” he said dryly. “That’s in your Bible. Naksh, I didn’t want you punished.”

  “You set spies on us.”

  “Never.”

  “They trailed us from the Valley of the Kings,” I said, and told him about the four who had been destroyed by the hamseen.

  “They weren’t my men.”

  “Then whose?”

  His eyes brooded in the torchlight. “Doubtless they were paid by Rais Guzman with Byzantine gold.”

  “The princess?” I whispered.

  “Yes. To set your mind at ease, she’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “She’s with her illustrious ancestors. About two months ago I received word that there had been an outbreak of plague in Constantinople, and among the victims was Sultan Mahmoud’s niece.”

  The princess. I could see that haughty face, that arrogant nude body. She had ordered David killed, I told myself, and now she’s dead. Earlier this day I had rejoiced at Rais Guzman’s slaying. Now, though, I had only the unlocalized chill I might feel on seeing a beautiful yet poisonous reptile crushed.

  “So now you’re doubly free,” the Pasha said.

  All at once I blurted out what was on my mind. “I don’t understand why you aren’t punishing me. Us. Every law is on your side.”

  The gray eyes were on me with that old, watchful glint. “I should avenge myself?”

  I nodded.

  “Naksh, didn’t you learn anything in the years we were married?”

  “So much,” I retorted with sincerity, remembering the naive girl I’d been, ignorant of the East, filled with unsubstantiated prejudices. “So very much.”

  “Then accept that I, too, learned.”

  “Knowledge of the West?” I asked.

  Stephen’s hurried footsteps could already be heard in the tunnel.

  The Pasha gave a brief laugh that wasn’t mocking but bitterly sad. “You’re so well schooled, so educated. How can you be so utterly ignorant of me?” He bent to pick up a flat box. “This was found among Rais Guzman’s possessions.”

  “What did you learn?”

  He whispered the reply.

  His words didn’t register until later, for I was opening the box.

  In front of me lay the Emerald Embrace.

  In front of her lay the green and gold necklace. She was stretched in the position of grief, and around her in the sanctuary were depictions of Thutmose paying due respect to Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead.

  He had been sorely wounded quelling the Hittites and he was carried home to Egypt, but the night before he had reached Thebes his ka had departed from him. And for seventy days now he had been in the House of the Dead, undergoing the rites that would keep his body incorruptible.

  And these seventy days Nefer had remained within the Temple of Amon. There, she had spent the vast fortune that the Pharaoh had bestowed on her to make one single amulet, this necklace.

  The screen was open. In the other chambers blind tomb slaves worked, oblivious to the red torchlight, while priests moved about chanting over the necessary objects. The High Priest himself was blessing the box of her past. Finishing, he came over to her.

  His sandal next to her bright hair, he said, “We are ready for the giving of the last gift.”

  Nefer raised up the necklace.

  “When the ruler of Egypt returns this to you, oh wife from the Island of the Western Mists, you and he will be joined through all eternity.”

  “In our love?” she asked.

  “In the full noontime glory of your love,” the High Priest assured her. “And now it is time for you to quit this solemn place.”

  She gave the High Priest the wreath she had woven of blue lotus, and stood gazing one last time into the resting place of Thutmose, then she followed a priest of the third rank up the long tunnel.

  A few stars still shone. She waited, tears streaming down her face, until the High Priest emerged. There was a faraway clatter, a hideous tongueless cry. A slave had fallen. Nefer urged they return, but the High Priest refused. “Anubis now guards the tomb, and it is not fitting that we disturb a god.”

  Slaves heaped rubble into the steps until all signs of the sealed entry were hidden. As the sun rose the funeral cortege was curving along the wadi toward the Nile and the Lady Nefer no longer wept, for she knew that soon her enemies would put an end to her mortal days, soon the Emerald Embrace would join her for all time with Thutmose.

  Eleven

  “What is it, Liberty?” Stephen asked. He had come into the chamber and the Pasha had departed. “Did he frighten you?”

  I shook my head vehemently, but was unable to speak. Thutmose and Nefer were separated from me by an ocean of years, but my grief for them was overwhelming. I set the jewel case down, and covered my tear-drenched face.

  Stephen’s arms went around me and I felt him stroke my hair gently. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  At last I recovered enough to pull away. Blowing my nose, I said, “She was here.”

  “She?”

  “The Lady Nefer. She was stretched out in this room and she had the Emerald Embrace. I’ve never seen it in my visions before.” I clenched the handkerchief in my fist. “Stephen, remember I told you Monsieur Champollion hypothesized that it was a funerary object? Well, he was right. The High Priest took the necklace from her, saying it would link her forever with the ruler of Egypt.”

  A curious expression, like pain, twisted Stephen’s handsome features. He distrusted the necklace, not truly believing its influence, seeing it only as a gift from the Pasha to me.

  I touched his hand. “The reason the Pasha had me come here was to divorce me. That’s why his son and Ahmed were here. As witnesses.”

  “Then you’re no longer his wife,” Stephen said slowly.

  “And we needn’t feel guilt. We’re free.” Yet as I spoke I had never felt more imprisoned.

  “Let’s go up,” he s
aid.

  My nerves were on edge to leave. That sharp, baffling pain, though, had tightened around my head again. “In a minute,” I said.

  A muscle jumped at Stephen’s jaw. “You shouldn’t be down here.”

  I nodded at the opposite wall. “That’s the Pharaoh’s tomb.”

  “Liberty, you can’t know that,” he said in a tone of exasperated tenderness.

  “The High Priest took the necklace inside. So how did it get out?” I frowned, baffled. Despite its arcane powers, the Emerald Embrace was a real object, solid and substantial, prey to neither transportations nor magical appearances. How had it left a sealed-up wall? I puzzled aloud, “Nefer heard one of the slaves fall. And when Rais Guzman brought me down here, there was a skeleton.”

  Stephen took my arm. “You’re shaking. It’s very bad for you to be here.”

  I barely heard him. “Maybe that slave stole the necklace. And if modern robbers broke the outer entry, they could have taken the necklace, then shoved back the rubble, expecting to return and search further.”

  I glanced down at the Emerald Embrace. The green circles glinted in the torchlight. Slowly, almost unwillingly, I moved to the wall where Thutmose offered the god of the dead a carved alabaster goblet.

  This painting, like all the others, was framed with hieroglyphs done in turquoise and gold leaf. Even when I looked at it up close, the wall appeared to be completely flat.

  I bent, running my fingers along the bottom border.

  The entire panel jutted out about four inches.

  The painitng was on a slab, the reverse of the indented one that led to the corridor. Somehow I had known it would be like that, known that the lower line, tinted a paler turquoise to accommodate the shadow falling from the torch, was a superb piece of trompe l’oeil. Unless one were touching, there was no way to realize that the panel was set forward.

  I rapped.

  The stone returned a hollow sound.

  Stephen and I exchanged glances. He nodded, taking down the meshal that was affixed above the panel. Without a word he handed me the thick cedar pole. I held the torch. He pressed his palms against the stone, throwing his full weight to the left. My breath caught in my throat. His muscles bunched, and I clenched my back teeth in empathy with his efforts.

  Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “It won’t budge in this direction,” he gasped. “Maybe it moves to the right.”

  He walked around me, spreading his booted legs to brace himself as he forced his muscular strength to the right.

  This time as he strained there was a portentous grating creak. My heart thumped and gooseflesh rose all over me. The dry creaking was alien, inimical to life; the sound came like a signal from the world of the dead.

  He pressed harder, grunting.

  Flames jumped wildly, nearly dying as the vacuum of four thousand years rushed out, engulfing us. The light steadied.

  Stephen had paused and was wiping his forehead.

  Arms quivering, I held the torch to the crack.

  The slim wand of light barely dispelled the darkness, but as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, details began emerging, strangely shaped animals, exotically jeweled caskets, gold boxes, richly carved rare woods, gold and more gold, the furnishings of royal death. Yet some had been the Pharaoh’s in life, for I recognized the dim outline of a chair. I had seen Thutmose sit in this lovely, slim-legged chair as he watched Nefer float in the sunlit pool, seen him rise from the tiger skin seat for a lingering, watery kiss.

  “Can you see anything?” Stephen asked.

  In a low, awed voice, I repied, “Yes. Wonderful things.”

  Stephen inched open the stone until there was room enough to admit us. Then he took the meshal from me and, stepping inside, extended a hand to help me.

  The stillness there was so profound that motion seemed a sacrilege, and we stood peering into the dim recesses.

  All about the room there were magnificent articles wrought for function and for pleasure, gold weapons, gold musical instruments, gold bridles, alabaster dishes, cloisonné goblets, even an exquisite ivory and gold chess-squared game. Mysterious figurines with purposes we could never fathom were turned like eerie sentinels to gaze at us with reproachful, jeweled eyes.

  Directly ahead was an opening painted on either side with man-size, animal-head creatures.

  Slowly, reverently, we approached the inner chamber.

  Here, on a carved black marble slab, lay the mummiform golden sarcophagus of Thutmose, Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt.

  The sculptured mask, of smoothly burnished gold, was the treasure of treasures, a serene likeness of the proud, hawk-nosed monarch. His faience eyes, lengthened with black obsidian, gazed up at us with contemplative tranquillity.

  The crossed golden hands held a crook and a flail, the symbols of his earthly authority, and atop these hands lay an incongruous circle of dust that I alone in the world knew had once been a wreath of blue lotus.

  I reached out. The slight movement of air scattered ancient withered blossoms into motes, a constellation turned bright by the torch.

  “There’s a peculiar grooving on the mask,” Stephen said. “It’s as if something were intended to go there.”

  I retraced my footsteps through the treasure-packed antechambers, intent as a ghostly handmaiden on performing a necessary rite. Taking the Emerald Embrace from its box, holding it in both hands, I went back to where Stephen held the torch.

  Looking down at the mask, I thought: O Lord of the Two Lands, receive thy last gift of Nefer’s love.

  The side of my fingers touching cool metal, I arranged the falcon and the two great circles of glass, letting the feathers rustle into place.

  And staring down at the necklace resting where it belonged, I felt the pressure ease in my head.

  And I heard again the Pasha’s final words to me. I learned love from you, he had said.

  He loved me.

  Love was why he had given me his signet ring. For love he had relinquished the wealth and prestige of Constantinople. Love was why he hadn’t punished me for love is stronger than vengeance.

  I pressed a golden feather into its proper groove.

  Stephen’s mouth had formed a small, unconscious smile, and I knew he was relieved that the necklace had been returned to its rightful owner.

  So was I.

  Taking his hand, I said, “Darling, I’m free of the necklace, free of my marriage. And from this day on I’m yours alone.”

  “Then come,” he said, taking my hand.

  And we left the tomb forever.

  The swift Egyptian twilight was falling, and a swallow curved across the red sky. The Pasha was waiting amid his guards.

  “Ah, Commodore,” he said. “It’s getting dark. We’ll escort you and Miss Moore to your encampment.”

  “Pasha!” My excitement bubbled and I had to remind myself to dip into a curtsy. “Pasha.…” The word faded. I was looking at him.

  And for the first time, saw him clearly.

  Until now my vision of him had been distorted because he was my owner, then my vengeful husband, because I was unwillingly tied to him by the carnal powers of the Emerald Embrace. Now, free at last, I peered through the dusk and saw him. I’m not saying I fully understood him; I never could fully comprehend the brilliance of his diamond-shrewd brain. But I was able to see him for what he was, a wisely benevolent ruler with a sense of destiny that few monarchs in history had ever possessed.

  “Well, Miss Moore?” he inquired, leading me apart, though the ledge was too small for any private conversation.

  Awed by my new image of him, I couldn’t speak.

  He gave me that barbed smile. Before, I had found this smile infuriating, but at last I could accept it for what it was, a screen that hid a middle-aged man’s obstinate love from a younger woman unable to return that love.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  I swallowed. “Commodore Delaplane pushed that wall, the one you,
uh, believed would move.”

  “Oh?”

  “And behind it … you were right, Pasha. Behind it were such wonders.”

  His sudden smile was open, happy. “The tomb of Thutmose?”

  “Unplundered,” I said.

  “Then you must feel gratified, Miss Moore. You’ve repaid your debt to Egypt.”

  My mouth trembled and I shook my head. The tomb was worth an incalculable fortune, but what he had given me was infinitely more precious. His living paradoxical heart. “Some debts,” I said softly, “being of the mortal kind, Pasha, can never be repaid.”

  My eyes were moist.

  Brusquely he turned away. “Ahmed! Ibraham!” he called. “Miss Moore has told me some wonderful news!”

  Twelve

  That morning of November 21, a heavy rain fell on Washington, loosening the last of the red leaves on the oak tree in Mrs. Yarby’s front garden, but at noon the sun came out and the afternoon turned warm. My godmother and I were on the front porch when Stephen returned home with news that President Monroe had appointed him Navy Commissioner. Stephen, proud of the honor, smiled with embarrassed pleasure at my excitement, and glanced in the direction of the rebuilt White House.

  “Later on the President will return me to sea duty,” he said.

  “Later, yes,” retorted Mrs. Yarby in her sensible Yankee voice. “But it’s good that you can stay here with Liberty until you move into the house.”

  On my lot next door, hammers rang out as carpenters worked on the framework of a pleasant house with broad porches. There was a more pressing reason, however, for Stephen to remain with me, the same reason I wore the enveloping green shawl. I was expecting a baby in three months.

  We had been married nearly a year earlier in Mrs. Yarby’s candelit front parlor, toasted by our friends, including Yacub, who now ran his own livery stable.

  In our excitement about Stephen’s appointment, none of us saw the naval supply wagon until the sailor came up the path.