“Enough for now,” he decided. “Let’s go have that wine.” Crooking a comradely arm around Kate’s neck, he guided her toward the kitchen.
Sam tagged along, not ready to let either of them out of his sight.
8
“Aside from the evisceration, her body struck me as relatively undisturbed,” Max told Dave, who had agreed to meet them at the museum even though he didn’t usually come in on Saturdays. “We can see soft-tissue collections in the orbits, extending posteriorly. Probably the remains of the globes and optic nerves. In the end we had thirty-four measurements to plug into the formula to establish age, so we’re confident that she was somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-five. With only the teeth and cranial sutures to go by on him, we have to stay with a wider range—forty and forty-eight.”
“What about that canopic bundle in his mouth?” Dave asked. “Did you find out what that is?”
Max shuffled the stack of plastic sleeves that held the X-ray film—color transparencies presented twenty to a sheet, four across and five down—searching for the axial images he wanted. When he found it he slid the sheet onto the lighted viewbox, the reason they had moved from Dave’s office to Kate’s workroom.
“I passed these around to my partners in Houston, but we all came up empty-handed. Maybe you’ll recognize something. This is the base of the maxilla, and here’s the missing molar I mentioned. And here, dead center of the arch, is some rectangular object—see how the shape stays the same from one image to another? The wrapping conforms to the contours of the mouth, but the rectangle inside it has the radiodensity of bone. There’s also a hollow, tubelike object inside it.” He traced the gray circle inside the white rectangle. “Only thing I can think of is a box of some kind.”
Kate had an idea what both objects might be, if the diameter of the tube stayed constant along its entire length, but she didn’t want to interrupt Max’s presentation.
“Could it be a penis?” Dave asked. “Yes or no.”
“I doubt it.”
“Thought so, or Cleo would have been here strutting like a peacock.”
“Do you attach any significance to the fact that Tashat’s child wasn’t mentioned in that coffin inscription?” Max inquired.
“Because it was fathered by her lover? Hardly. The child probably died in infancy, or was a girl. In case you didn’t notice, there’s no mention of her mother, either. Females were of little importance unless they were royal.”
Max flipped the switch on the viewbox. “Well, that’s about it, then. We estimate she stood four feet, ten inches tall, with no obvious skeletal abnormalities … unless you consider being left-handed abnormal. The ulna and radius generally are a little longer in the dominant arm, in this case the left one. Same with the humerus.”
The significance of what he was saying hit Kate like a clap of thunder, leaving behind a profound silence. Why, if the skeletal evidence showed Tashat was left-handed, had he let her go on about it last night, building a case on those painted figures alone?
“Also the humeral head tends to be a little more rounded,” Max continued for Dave’s benefit, before he finally looked at Kate—and couldn’t keep a straight face any longer. It dawned on her suddenly that he was paying her back for Sam!
“What’s the joke?” Dave groused.
“Kate got there a different way, that’s all,” Max replied, “a way that ties up another loose end. The coffin wasn’t intended for someone else, then for some reason got switched and ended up with Tashat.”
“How so?” Dave inquired.
“The girl, then woman, on the inside of the coffin lid—they’re both left-handed.”
Dave stalked over to where the lid leaned against the wall and squatted down to see for himself. When he stood up his face was an unhealthy pink except for the ring of white around his lips. “Have to give you credit, McKinnon. That’s pretty good detective work for an amateur. But you’re still just a hired hand, so don’t go expecting to get your name on any publications coming out of this project.”
“Oh, by the way,” Max put in, saving her from saying something she might regret later, “I found those articles you gave me pretty fascinating reading.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” Dave replied, losing interest in Kate.
“Was Akhenaten stark raving mad or what? Have to be, wouldn’t he, to go for another man when he had a looker like Nefertiti for a wife?”
Kate froze, not daring to look anywhere but out the window. Max was engaging the enemy on his own territory!
Dave shrugged. “Maybe there’s something to the genetic thing, after all.”
“Intrigued me how you fit all the pieces of the puzzle together—” Max went on, disarming Dave with an admiring smile. “Nefertiti’s disappearance, making Smenkhkare his coregent, that relief showing two pharaohs fondling each other, giving him her throne name. After what you said about names being so important, that must’ve been the ultimate dirty trick.” Like a warning shot across the bow, something in Max’s voice sent a shiver down Kate’s spine. “I was just wondering what she did to provoke that kind of retribution?”
Dave exhaled a nervous chuckle. “One thing you have to live with in my field, Dr. Cavanaugh, is rarely having all the evidence you’d like. Don’t you ever have to deduce something from whatever you’ve got, incomplete as it may be?”
“Sure, I guess we all do. But it makes even more sense for two pharaohs to be shown in an embrace if they were hus band and wife, and for her to keep the name he gave her when she became queen, along with the name he gave his coregent.”
Rendered momentarily speechless, Dave sputtered like a dying sparkler. In the end he sought refuge in maligning the messenger. “That theory is not the first absurd notion to come from one of the Egyptologists who put it forward in the first place.”
“But doesn’t it make more sense to send a royal heiress to Thebes rather than a homosexual lover, to pacify the Amen priests who are stirring things up?”
“Queen Tiye was on occasion referred to as an heiress, too, and she was a commoner. So a little knowledge sometimes can lead you astray.” Dave glanced at his watch, then rose and extended his hand to Max, bringing their encounter to a close. Still, he couldn’t resist a parting shot. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for any more history lessons today, Dr. Cavanaugh, but we do appreciate all you’ve done.”
Once outside Max took off so fast Kate was hard-pressed to keep up with him. He also kept muttering under his breath, but the only thing she heard clearly was, “Blood grouping my ass, with pharaohs sleeping with their sisters, even their own daughters!”
“I wonder if that’s really true,” Kate volunteered, just to distract him. She was seeing a side of Maxwell Cavanaugh that surprised her, a man who let it all hang out. “They’re supposed to have used the same word for sister and wife, but I think it’s more likely that our ability to translate their language is flawed. Academics argue over how to interpret some minor variation in a symbol—is it just a mistake, something unintended, or does it have a different meaning?”
He jammed the key in the car door, then pulled it open for her. “Do you have to put up with that kind of crap all the time or does something about me bring out the worst in that bastard?” He went around to the driver’s side, started the motor, and drove out of the parking lot as if the hounds of hell were on his trail. A man with a temper.
“I think he suspects something—you know, with Cleo. He’s been coming by the workroom every day, watches what I’m doing for a few minutes, then leaves without a word. I’m worried that he might get riled up about something I do or say and use it as an excuse to send Cleo packing. Museum jobs are scarce as hen’s teeth these days, even with a Ph.D., which she doesn’t have.”
He took his foot off the accelerator so fast it felt like he’d hit the brake. “I’m sorry, Kate. I didn’t much cotton to the way he treated you the last time, but I figured he was busy, had other things on his mind. When he calle
d you a hired hand I just saw red, wanted to hit him where it would hurt most.”
“It’s Tashat I care about. I can live without Dave’s good opinion.”
“Is that why you were quiet in there?”
She shook her head. “Mostly I was afraid I might put my foot in my mouth. Didn’t sleep too well last night.”
“Too much medicinal garden?”
She shook her head. “Crazy dreams. Part sleeping-dream, part waking-dream, if you know what I mean. You’re the doctor. You tell me what’s going on when that happens.”
“Mostly too much.” He didn’t say anything for a block or two, then, “Are you spending the holidays with your family?”
“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet. I know Christmas is less than a week away, but I’ve been too busy to make any plans. Cleo and Phil are cooking a turkey and want me to have dinner with them.”
“Where do your folks live?” he persisted, fishing.
“They’re divorced, so I don’t see either one very often. Mom moved to California and my father lives in Ohio. He has two boys from his second marriage.” She had intended to give ancient Egypt a rest, but any port in a storm. “I wonder what it was like to be left-handed back when everyone believed in magic spells and evil spirits. Could that be why it was damaged?”
“Like driving a stake through the heart of a vampire or burning a witch at the stake?” Max shrugged. “Possible, I suppose. A lot of lefties are marked in ways that don’t appear to be related to handedness. One syndrome includes alcoholism, epilepsy, and autoimmune disorders, for instance, probably the result of a stressed birth that affects the left hemisphere of the brain. Remember George Bush? A high incidence of dyslexia among lefties might explain his syntax problems. He also has Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disorder. We know right-brain hemispheres in lefties don’t perform exactly the way left hemispheres do for righthanders, but we’re still trying to track all the ramifications of that.”
‘Track how?”
“Looking at the neurological activities of the brain under conditions where we control the stimuli and can map the response.”
“You mean you’re involved in research in addition to your practice?”
“Yeah, with a group at the UT Medical School.” He barely paused. “So how much time do you have off?”
“Five days, but I’ll probably stay here and work,” she answered, wondering why he kept asking. “I’m really anxious, now that we’re about to see what Tashat actually looked like.”
That was true, but Christmas was for kids and families. Just not the kind she had. Now that she was twenty-eight her father treated her with studied politeness but with none of the warmth he exhibited toward her two half brothers. But then they hadn’t failed him … yet. Worse was the guilt she felt, even now, about letting her mother down.
“How about coming to Houston for a couple of days? I could show you some stuff you won’t see outside a big teaching hospital. A colleague of mine uses a computer to plan how he’s going to rebuild the skulls of patients with malformed faces. All we’d have to do is plug our measurements into his software and you could play with the tolerances on tissue depths, try out different lashes and brows, hairlines, lip shapes—on both heads, if you want.”
It was a reminder that she was fast becoming obsolete, that technology soon would supersede everything she could do. When that happened she’d be lucky to get a job at McDonald’s, given her Achilles’ heel—her inability to deal with noise. Not that anything was wrong with her ears, as her father liked to remind her every chance he got. Max’s voice brought her back from a place she didn’t want to be.
“You don’t need to decide right now, but think about it, okay?”
She nodded, relieved that he wasn’t going to push. Relieved, too, that the session with Dave was over. She needed a breather from Egypt and Tashat, though nothing she had tried so far was working. Last week she’d been driving the back road to Boulder—the open fields on either side covered by a thin blanket of snow, Flatirons looming straight ahead, sharp as a scissors-cut silhouette against the Milky Way—when a hushed stillness came over the car. Suddenly, everywhere she looked, the snow had turned to sand. The broad valley became a vast, lifeless desert, except dead ahead, where the massive red cliffs stood guard over the Place of Truth. Now, as if triggered by that memory, the same stillness muted the noise around her. She waited, but nothing came, neither familiar nor imagined images, only a vague sense of something about to happen. That’s when she decided she was going to Houston.
“Kate? What do you think?” Max asked.
“Sorry. I was somewhere else.”
“How about swinging by to get Sam, then drive up into the mountains a little way, clear Dave out of our heads.”
“Two of Sam’s all-time favorite things are riding in the car and getting to sniff out all the prairie-dog holes in some high meadow.” She smiled, pleased that he would think to include her dog. Sam was going to be more than a little unhappy when Max left. Truth to tell she was going to feel a little let down herself, back to going it alone.
Three godlike sparrows swoop and spin above the banks. Even the frogs are dancing.
—Normandi Ellis, Awakening Osiris
9
Year Nine in the Reign of Tutankhamen
(1352 B.C.)
DAY 16, SECOND MONTH OF INUNDATION
The face of Re-Horakhte burst above the horizon with an exuberance that matched my own, as if he, too, felt the excitement that caused my heart to thump against my ribs. Today marks the second month of life for Pharaoh’s son, when he honors those who have served him above all others. And the name at the top of his list is a certain Senakhtenre, physician of Waset.
Mena served as my escort, on Pharaoh’s orders, he claimed, and as we neared the royal precinct he tried to put me at ease. “The honor does you no harm with Ramose, since any glory that falls on his physician shines on Ramose as well. But you could not have dissuaded Pharaoh even had you tried. Aside from showing off his son, he signals that he is taking the reins of power into his own hands, simply by flaunting the skills of an ordinary sunu. It is his way of letting everyone know that he no longer depends on the old men around him to direct his every move.”
More important to me at the moment was how to behave when Pharaoh called me before him. “Are you certain my appearance will not embarrass him, or the Queen?” I asked, though I wore a tunic of fine linen over a short pleated kilt and painted leather sandals. They were the best I owned, yet I worried they were not good enough.
“You will not shame either your King or your employer, if that is what you ask,” Mena assured me, “though I suspect you are more concerned with two small girls. If left to them, you could cover yourself in rags and it would be the rest of us who are out of fashion.” He paused. “I am not inclined to jealousy where my daughter is concerned, Tenre, but can you say the same for the priest?”
If he meant to give me more to worry about, he succeeded, but we were entering the palace grounds and my thoughts flew ahead of us, beyond the fragrant shrubs and brilliant flowers. I could not imagine that Pharaoh’s house could be grander than the Queen’s apartments, where marble steps sparkled with streaks of pink and black, and the walls portrayed the movement of life rather than the stillness of eternity—tiny birds darting among fruit-bearing trees, a herd of galloping gazelle—yet an awesome majesty pervaded my senses as we came into the huge throne room.
At the far end were only columns, making the vast hall one with the courtyard outside, where a light breeze ruffled the leaves of sycamores and acacia trees. A milling throng already had gathered, but ornately inlaid chairs lined the edges of the room, exposing rich carpets that hushed our footsteps and voices, while on the walls hunters stalked their prey in the desert or poled skiffs through the marshes, their throwing sticks at the ready.
At that moment the assembled guests bent like a field of wheat in the wind, so we did likewise as Nefertiti and Mutnodjme moved tow
ard the dais and took their places, followed by the women of Pharaoh’s harem. “Pharaoh’s sisters are much together since the General sailed down the river,” Mena observed from behind his hand.
Next came the Royal Ornaments and favorites wearing crowns of blue lotus blossoms. All but Aset and Nebet, who had draped themselves with garlands of blue cornflowers and white daisies. At seven Aset remains small for her age, so the two girls stood shoulder to shoulder and looked almost like twins in identical white gowns. Both wore the palm-frond sandals Ipwet had fashioned to Aset’s liking, as well, which turned out to be exactly what Nebet needs since, with her uneven gait, the built-up edge around the sole keeps her foot from sliding off to the side. They searched the crowd for us and were about to wave when Tetisheri laid a restraining hand on each shoulder and then smiled at Mena, sharing her delight in their daughter.
“See how well she goes with the new brace?” he whispered, fighting to keep his head bowed when his eyes hungered for his wife and daughter. “Even better when she walks beside her friend. Together they make more than two, as if each adds something to the other. Whatever magic lies behind those blue eyes, I begin to understand why she fills your heart—though she is the child of another man.” He leaned closer. “Not only that, but from the night you brought Aset to our house, Sheri comes to me with eagerness again. For that alone I will thank you to the end of my days.”
A parade of youths threaded their way through the crowd to take their places before the dais. “Children of the Kap,” Mena explained, “led by Hiknefer, Crown Prince of Aniba and friend of Tutankhamen since they were boys.” I knew of the custom of having the sons of Kemet’s vassals attend the palace school with Pharaoh’s own children and those of favored nobles. But what interested me most was that Senmut’s brother wore wild cattails on each arm, ostrich feathers in his white headband, and gold tassels hanging from his ears. He also kept his frizzy hair trimmed above his ears.
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