The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 131

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message to Mummy, just to let her know that I am all right. I don't want

her to worry about me."

As they climbed back down the scaffolding to where the fly camp had been

set up on the rock ledge beside Taita's pool, Nicholas thought how

fortuitous it was that Royan had her mother's phone number already

written down to hand to Tessay, and he wondered at this sudden

(I urge of Royan's to report her whereabouts to her mother.

wonder what she is really up to?" he mused. "I will try and wheedle it

out of Tessay when she returns."

Royan would have preferred to camp in the tomb itself, so as to be in

the midst of the inscriptions on which she was working, but Nicholas had

insisted that they sleep in the open air, and the ledge was as close as

they could get to their workplace. "The musty air in the tomb is very

probably unhealthy," he told her. "Cave disease is a real danger in

these old enclosed places. They say that is what killed some of Howard

Carter's people working in the tomb of Tutankhamen."

"The fungus spores that cause cave disease breed in bat dung," she

pointed out. "There are no bats in Mamose's tomb. Taita sealed it up too

tightly."

"Humour me," he begged. "You cannot work in there for days on end. I

want you at least to get out of the tomb for a few hours each day."

She shrugged. "Only as a special favour to you," she agreed, but as they

reached the foot of the scaffolding she gave her new sleeping quarters

only a perfunctory glance and then headed for the coffer dam and the

entrance to the approach tunnel.

They had converted the landing at the top of the staircase, outside the

plaster-seated entrance to the tomb, into their workshop. Royan spread

her drawings and photographs and reference books on the rough table of

handhewn planks that Hansith made for her. Sapper had placed one of the

floodlamps above this crude desk so that she had good light to work by.

Against one wall of the landing they had stacked the ammunition crates

which contained the eight sacred statues. Nicholas had insisted on

storing all their discoveries where he could safeguard them adequately.

Mek's armed men still kept a twenty-four-hour guard on the causeway over

the sink-hole.

While Nicholas completed his photographic record of the walls of the

long gallery and the empty burial chamber, Royan sat at her table and

pored over her papers for hours at a time, scribbling notes and

calculations from them into her notebooks. Now and then she would jump

up from her desk and dart through the hatch in the white plaster doorway

into the long gallery to study a detail on the decorated walls.

Whenever this happened, Nicholas straightened up from his camera tripod

and watched her with a fond and indulgent expression. So intent was she

that she seemed completely oblivious of him and everybody else about

her.

Nicholas had never seen her in this mood, and the depth of her powers of

concentration impressed him.

When she had worked for fifteen hours without a break he went out on to

the landing to rescue her and to lead her, protesting, back down the

tunnel to the pool where there was a hot meal waiting for them. After

she had eaten he led her to her hut and insisted that she lie down on

her inflatable mattress.

"You are going to sleep now, Royan," he ordered.

He woke to hear her creeping stealthily out of the hut next door to his,

back along the ledge to the entrance to the tomb. He checked his watch

and grunted with disbelief when he realized that they had slept for only

three and a half hours. He shaved quickly and bolted back a slab of

toasted injera bread and a cup of tea before following her into the

tomb.

He found her standing in the long gallery before the empty niche in the

shrine where the statuette of Osiris had stood. She was so preoccupied

that she did not hear him come up behind her, and she started violently

when he touched her arm.

"You startled me," she scolded him.

"What are you staring at?" he asked. "What have you discovered?"

"Nothing," she denied swiftly, and then after a moment, "I don't know.

It's just an idea."

"Come on! What are you up to?"

"It's easier for me to show you." She led him back to her table on the

stone landing, and rearranged her notebooks carefully before she spoke

again.

"What I have been doing these last few days is going through the

material on the stele of Tanus's tomb, picking out all the quotations

that I recognize from the classical books of mystery, the Book of

Breathings, the Book of the Pylons and -the Book of Thoth, and setting

those on one side." She showed him fifteen pages in her neat small

script.

"All this is ancient material, none of it original compositions by

Taita. I have discarded it for the time being."

She set the first notebook aside and picked up the next. "All this is

from the fourth face of the stele. It's nothing that I recognize, but

seems to be only long lists of numbers and figures. Some sort of code,

perhaps? I am not sure, but I do have some ideas on it that I will come

to later.

Now this here," she showed him the next book, "this is all fresh

material that I don't remember reading in any of the ancient classics.

Much of it, if not all of it, must be original Taita writings. If he has

left any more clues for us, I believe they will be here, in these

sections."

He grinned, "Like that marvelous quotation describing the pink and

private parts of the goddess. Is that what you are referring to?"

"Trust you not to forget that." She flushed lightly and refused to look

up from her notebook. "Look at this quotation from the head of the third

face of the stele, the side Taita has headed "autumn". It's the very

first one that caught my attention."

Nicholas leaned forward and read the hieroglyphics aloud: "'The great

god Osiris makes the opening coup with deference to the protocol of the

four bulls. At the first pylon he bears full testimony to the immutable

law of the board."' He looked up at her. "Yes, I remember that

quotation. Taita is referring to bao, the game that the old devil loved

so passionately."

"That's right." Royan looked slightly embarrassed. "But do you also

remember that I told you about a dream that I had in which I saw Du raid

again in one of the chambers of the tomb?"

"I remember." He chuckled at her discomfort. "He said I of the four

bulls. Now

4 something to you about the protoco we are going in to the, realm of

divination by dreams, are we?"

She looked annoyed by his levity. "All I am suggesting is that my

subconscious had been -digesting the quotation and come up with an

answer, which it put into the mouth of Duraid in the dream. Can't you be

serious just for one moment?

"Sorry." He was contrite. "Remind me what you heard Duraid say."

"In the dream he told me, "Remember the protocol of the four bulls -

Start at the beginning."'

"I am no expert on the game of bao. What did he mean?"

"The rules and subtleties of the game have been lost in the mists of

antiquity. But as you know, we have found examples of the bao board

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