A Time to Seek, page 21
He grunted and leaned over, then glanced at me. “You did that?”
I nodded. “Tell me something else to draw.”
He thought for a moment. “A camel.”
“Too much detail for this pebble.” I pretended to search around. “Hand me a piece of charred wood.” I pointed to the edge of the fire. “Not hot,” I added.
He hesitated, then shrugged and flicked a blackened ember toward my feet.
I scooped it up with my chained hands, and proceeded to sketch out a camel on the stone.
The guard scooted closer and watched me work.
I finished the camel, and then for good measure, drew a splash of spit hitting the ground in front of him.
My audience laughed at my joke.
“Now me.”
“What?”
He pointed to my rooftop canvas. “Draw me.”
Just the opening I’d hoped for.
“People are much more complicated. So much shading, and I’d want to get it right.” I held up my hands. “Not possible with these.”
He frowned, then looked around at our empty rooftop, and shrugged. No doubt believing even if I ran, he could take me out with ease.
And so I was released, and, ember in hand, directed my subject to the best angle.
“Here,” I pointed. “With your face to the sun.”
And your back to the fire.
I crouched in front of him, and started the broad outlines of head and shoulders, giving him a width in the shoulders and a cut of the jawline that were both a bit generous.
He held his head up, but his eyes watched my fingers.
Still crouching, I paused as though unsure, then stood.
He watched me, but squinted at the blinding sun streaking across the desert into his eyes.
“Do you think I should stop there, at the midsection?” I pointed to the sketch.
As soon as he looked down, with my heart in my throat, I kicked him. Hard, in the chest.
He toppled backward into the fire.
Screaming.
And I ran.
My breath, when it came at all, gulped at air and barely released. I flew down the steps. The sound of his screams bounced inside my head.
My stomach heaved. I had to slow a moment, hand braced against the palace’s outer wall, to be sick.
I’d never done anything so cruel in my life. The only thing that kept me from collapsing in a heap was the repeated phrase in my mind… None of this is really happening.
It was happening, of course. It was a real man back there, in real pain. Pain I had caused. But somehow I was going to make it never happen. Like a sketch I’d drawn, but one I could erase.
I slid along the palace wall. Should I search for Bek? Was Jack still alive?
It had taken about twenty minutes for my chariot driver to bring me from the tomb to the palace four nights ago. How long would it take to run? Could I even find it?
The possibility of wandering the desert without food or water until I fell dead in the sand was not appealing.
“Pssst.”
I turned to the sound.
Bek peered around a corner, waving me toward him.
Oh, this boy.
I ran to him.
He grabbed my hand and led me, wordless, along back palace halls, through to the walled enclosure around the foreigners’ quarters.
We passed unhindered through the creaky gate, across an empty courtyard, to what appeared to be a trapdoor in the sand.
Bek lifted the door and pointed into the darkness.
A tunnel, perhaps? I climbed down the steps.
And into Jack’s arms.
“Sahara!”
The door dropped shut above us, but not before revealing the close confines of a tiny cellar. Not a tunnel.
Jack’s face was against my hair, his breath in my ear.
“I was terrified for you.” His words were muffled, with his face buried against my neck. “I knew I couldn’t get to you. The best thing I could do was get out here and arrange for Bek to help you…”
“Jack, it’s okay. I’m fine.” I pulled away.
The slim crack of light around the door illuminated Senamun’s worried face.
Bek crossed to the girl, then turned to me. “We have a plan.” He spoke as though in charge.
I smiled, despite the situation.
“I have a cousin. He sails upriver, very far sometimes, to trade. He is home in Thebes now, but he will take the Great Royal Wife to Punt at daybreak.”
Jack gave me a serious look. “And Sahara, we need to get to the tomb.”
I hated to ask any more of Bek, but did we have a choice?
“Bek, can you get us a chariot?”
Jack shook his head. “They are hunting for the boy now as well.”
Senamun wrapped a protective arm around Bek’s shoulder. “Perhaps if he hadn’t kicked the new pharaoh…”
Bek grinned. “Couldn’t help myself.”
Jack faced me. “I’m the only one Pharaoh Ay isn’t gunning for. I need to be the one to get us transportation to the tomb. Give me about an hour. Then get to the north wall of the palace.”
Bek’s head bobbed. “Yes, yes. We will take you to the tomb to meet your friends, on our way to my cousin!”
Friends?
Jack shrugged one shoulder.
So, I had to let Jack go again. Trust he would not abandon me. That he’d be waiting for me in an hour.
I studied his eyes, but it was too dark to gauge his truthfulness. He had kept so much back from me, and I sensed there was still more he had not said. Did he have some other agenda, even now?
Hands fisted against my sides and lips tight, I nodded once. It was the best I could do.
Jack embraced me again.
“You had better not get hurt,” I whispered.
He held me a moment longer, then disappeared up the steps.
When the three of us guessed our tense hour of waiting had passed, we followed Jack’s trip to the surface.
Bek took the lead, each of us resisting a run that might draw attention.
In the open courtyard, we were an easy target. At least guards weren’t armed with arrows. But how far could one of those javelins be hurled? The muscles between my shoulders tensed.
“You there!”
I cringed and ducked.
We all kept moving.
“Hold!”
Bek glanced at me, then Senamun, but slowed.
Senamun and I stopped behind him.
I turned and stepped in front of Senamun. “What is it?”
A single guard faced off against us, built wide with a jagged scar across his bottom lip.
“Are you the ones Pharaoh is searching for?”
Uh… no?
Bek spoke up. “I am accompanying the priestess Ra-Ne-Hannu back to the Temple of Amun.”
I lifted my head, attempting to look priestess-like.
He thrust his chin toward Bek. “I know you—you’re Ankhe-sen-amun’s little errand boy.”
Bek squared his shoulders, little fighter that he was. “You will address the Great Royal Wife by her proper titles.”
Another glance from the guard, this time at Senamun, and recognition.
He lurched toward us.
Faster than I would have thought possible, Bek loaded a sharp stone into his sling, stretched it taut, and flung the stone at his forehead.
The missile found its mark, and the guard oomphed and collapsed, like something out of a biblical tale.
But after only a beat, Bek’s conquest stirred and groaned.
“We must get out of here!” Bek tugged on my hand.
We slid along walls again, backtracking through hallways.
Was it possible? Would we remain undetected?
Finally, at the north side of the palace, the three of us leaned against the wall, panting.
“Where is he?” I scanned the horizon.
Had Jack already gone into the desert? Traveled home without me?
Or had he been detained—or worse—by the new pharaoh?
Senamun smiled. “You are very concerned for your friend.”
I felt myself coloring. “Yes. My friend.”
“He will not leave you.”
A crunching sound, like wheels on gravel, struck fear into my chest. We pulled back into the shadow of the wall.
But the two horses, and then the small chariot that lurched around the far corner of our section of the palace, nearly brought a laugh to my lips.
Jack had gotten to drive in ancient Egypt, after all.
Not quite a Fiat, but it would do.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
1325 B.C.
The House of Rejoicing, Thebes, Egypt
Jack rolled to a stop, held out an arm, and swung me into the chariot and into an embrace.
I leaned against him, relief flooding me. It had only been an hour. But I had felt the separation keenly. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
He glanced sideways, surprise in his eyes. “I could never leave you behind.”
Senamun and Bek climbed behind us.
Jack turned the chariot toward the darkening desert.
Night crept upward from the horizon as we churned up sand in our rush toward the tomb of Tut-ankh-amun. With nothing to hinder the last rays of the sun, they warmed the orange-tan landscape until the last finally disappeared below the rim of the earth.
We had the advantage of a bright moon rising behind us, promising enough light to navigate even in the darkness.
Senamun directed Jack, as though she knew the desert well. It all looked much the same to me, but I would have to trust my new friend. Perhaps she had been making journeys to hidden tombs in the desert all her life.
Hidden tombs…
The words of the supervisor who had driven me to the palace after I arrived came back to me.
“Have the stairs filled in by the time I return.”
What if the tomb had already been erased from view, hidden from looters? How would we ever find the door?
On the other hand, what would happen if we stood at the bottom of the door when we made the jump in time, and landed buried under six feet of sand?
And there was still the question of how my parents expected to stop Belzoni, if none of this made any difference at all.
I shook my head roughly, hoping to shake loose the contradictory thoughts. Jack knew more about all of this than I did, but there was no time for questions. I would have to wait. Wait and trust.
Look at me, trusting everyone today.
Jack directed the vehicle to a disturbed stretch of sand Senamun pointed out, and pulled up the reins.
“Where is it? Where is the tomb?”
“Just there.” Senamun pointed. “There is a small marker that will remain for the first year.”
Jack grabbed my hand and we stepped down into the sand.
I turned to Senamun and Bek. “We must say goodbye now.”
Both our escorts frowned, then glanced at each other.
“But where are your friends? There is no one here to meet us. Who will take you?”
I broke away from Jack and crossed to the chariot. Though I had said goodbye to both of them earlier today, I wanted to say it again, with more time given.
“Ankhe-sen-amun,” I grasped her cool fingers, “You are an amazing young woman. I hope you will be well, and happy, and live a long life of peace.” I turned to Bek, at my eye level in the chariot, and took his hands in turn. “And you, my young friend, are also amazing. So smart and kind. You deserve to be loved well—so well— and to have wonderful adventures and people who love you and a home of your own.” My voice choked over the words. “I hope you find all of that.”
Senamun pulled the boy to herself, much as she had done earlier today, looked into my eyes over his head, and nodded. “He will.”
“Now, you both must go. Find Bek’s cousin, and stay safe until Punt. Don’t worry about us. We know how to get home from here.”
Jack nodded to Senamun and tousled Bek’s hair. “Safe travels.”
Still looking uncertain, but apparently deciding to believe us, the two circled the little chariot to point southward.
In the distance, torches flared in intervals at the base of the palace. An odd gap in the torchlight drew my attention.
“What is that?”
Not a gap—the light from the torches was blocked—by oncoming chariots.
“They are chasing us!” Senamun clutched at the chariot’s frame.
“You must go!”
One last wave, then Bek flicked the reins, and they rode away from the tomb, away from the palace. The chariot wheels kicked up little puffs of dust.
How was it possible none of this was happening, had happened, would happen? I could not work it out in my head. And I didn’t like it.
“Ready to dig?” Jack’s words broke the sudden, heavy silence of the desert. “We should get out before they arrive.”
I spun to scan the mounds and valleys around us. Looking away from the palace and oncoming chariots, as far as the eye could see, we were alone. So strange. I had never been so alone in my life.
And yet, Jack was here.
“I’m ready.”
He inclined his head toward the darker patch of sand and the marker. “The ground slopes downward. Hopefully the door won’t be far.”
I hesitated, biting my lip. “What if it’s not the right tomb? What will happen if we try to return from the wrong place?”
“I think… nothing. If we used the wrong tomb and were trying to travel backward in time, to an earlier time, I suppose we might end up there, if it was more than eighty years back. But trying to return to 1922, without touching the place where we arrived, does nothing.”
I took a deep breath. “If you say so. I don’t want to end up swirling in outer space forever, or disintegrated into dust, or something.”
He chuckled. “No, that sounds unpleasant.” He held out a hand. “Trust me.”
We hurried, hand-in-hand, to the little painted slab that poked from the slope.
With nothing but our hands, we began scooping away the loose sand, filled in only a few days ago.
And only a few days ago, I had dug out this very door alongside Howard Carter.
Within minutes, I could see the beginnings of the carved necropolis seals Howard and I uncovered last week.
The effect was dizzying. All around me was nothing. No excavated trench rising on all sides of me. No dig tents pitched around the site. No tent of Howard’s, with his bottles of whiskey buried under spare trousers in his steamer trunk. This was the same door, three thousand years younger. And nothing else was the same.
Jack knelt. “I think this should be enough, to get our hands on it.”
“Wait—I—I need to know what to expect.”
He sat back on his heels, eyed the oncoming dust storm of chariots.
I couldn’t make out yet how many there were. But they’d be here soon.
“When we arrive. We won’t be together, will we?”
He studied the sky, a crease forming between his brows. “Let’s see. I went out to the site about an hour after I left you. What time did you get there?” He half-smiled. “Well, here, I guess.”
“I don’t know. I left the American House soon after you dropped me off. Drove to the site. Oh, and told Chefren to wait for me with the car. So he should still be there, right?”
“Right. So, I guess I will show up back in ’22 about an hour later than you will. Can you wait for me, with the car? I didn’t tell my driver to wait.”
My brain was hurting again. “But I don’t understand. If you reached the site after I did, wouldn’t I have already returned? Why follow me at all, if I was already back?”
He frowned up at me where I stood above him.
“Because you hadn’t come back.”
“I don’t understand. You left ’22 after me, but arrived here before me—“
“Sahara, please. Leave the questions for later. Let’s get out of here.”
I nodded. Took a deep breath. Knelt beside Jack.
We reached our hands out together, but then I pulled mine back, an inch from the door.
He glanced back at our pursuers and growled.
“I just wanted to say… thank you. I know you expected me to be angry you followed me. And I was, a little. But mostly I’m grateful. I’m glad you were here, to explain things. To help.”
He curled his fingers around mine in the sand. “I’m glad I was here, too.”
“Not that you don’t still have a whole lot more explaining to do! Unless there’s some kind of time travel school I can attend.”
He squeezed my hand and smiled. “I’ll be there. For whatever you need.”
I took another deep breath. My lungs couldn’t seem to get enough of ancient air.
“You know, a strange part of me doesn’t want to leave this place. I wished I had been able to see more.”
“I get that. But Ay and his soldiers appearing on the horizon is a bit of motivation.”
“Agreed.”
“Besides, ancient Egypt had about three thousand years of history to it. Even at eighty-year intervals, that’s an immense amount of time to visit.”
I smiled. I would be back.
“Let’s go home.”
Still kneeling, fingertips touching, we placed two palms on the door.
I placed my mind back in 1922, at the digsite.
We both bent our heads in a sort of strange obeisance to the carved door.
As my head tipped downward, I wished once again the things I had done here, the help I had given Senamun, had not been in vain. That it had meaning. That my departure would not simply erase my arrival.
And then the vertigo, and all thoughts were pushed aside.
As before, the sensation of time slowing, rather than speeding up, overwhelmed me. Floating, with images cascading. No thought, just a detached sort of observation at the images that spun past.
A red-and-white striped tricycle. Something like I’d seen ridden by ladies in flowing dresses in Hyde Park, but much smaller.
Standing in the center of a book-filled room with my parents, our hands clasped to form a circle and my parents bowing to me, as though teaching me a new dance. The scene blurring and then reforming, different somehow.
