“And this is more craggy than the norm?” TJ was holding the bone in her hand, thoughtfully feeling the tuberosity.
“Much,” Gideon said. “So-”
“But isn’t this also called a squatting facet?” she asked. “And scribes didn’t squat, you know.”
“No, squatting facets are different. They’re on the femur or the tibia, and our man here doesn’t have any. But he does have something else.” He held up the fibula for them. “Can you see that it’s laterally bowed?”
Jerry had finally gotten his pipe going. He looked at the slender bone through wreaths of smoke. “Nope.”
“I can,” TJ said. “Just a slight curve.”
“Right. It comes from sitting cross-legged, which puts a tremendous amount of sideways pressure on the feet, which in turn-”
“And that’s the way scribes sat,” TJ said, beginning to see the picture. “On the floor, legs crossed, linen skirt stretched stiffly across the thighs as a writing surface…”
“Exactly,” Gideon said. “And here’s the clincher: this ridge along the finger bone.” He held it so that they could see it clearly, although he knew they were unlikely to make anything of it. Even his students had a hard time with the individual phalanges of the fingers. Too many of them- twenty-eight, counting both hands-and too much alike.
“This is the first joint of the right index finger, and the ridge we’re looking at is on the palmar surface. It’s where the flexor ligament attaches. Ordinarily you can barely see it-”
“I can barely see it now,” Jerry said.
“-but it can get enlarged like this from grasping something between finger and thumb, firmly and for long periods of time.”
“A stylus,” TJ said under her breath. “Well, how about that.”
“There’s no way to be sure,” Gideon said, “but it all adds up to a scribe. Put all these skeletal things together, throw in the fact that we’re talking about a Fifth Dynasty Theban, and that’s what you come up with. At least, it’s what I come up with.”
He brushed bone crumbs from his hands, well content. “Not that it gets us any closer to what he was doing in the junk heap.”
“Who cares?” TJ said, beginning to put the bones back in the carton. “This has been really neat. Maybe I should have been a physical anthropologist.”
They were saying good night in the patio, at the foot of the stairs that led to Gideon’s upper-floor room, when he said: “I suppose I ought to mention this to Dr. Haddon. I’d feel a little funny not saying anything.”
“Up to you,” Jerry said, “but if it was me, I wouldn’t. Personally, I don’t think he’d be real thrilled to find out we got you involved in this.”
“Thrilled?” TJ said with a laugh. “He’d have a fit…” She frowned. “That reminds me. There was something funny this morning-I forgot to mention it to you, Jerry. Something Dr. H said.”
Her husband looked leery. “Do I want to know this?”
“Oh, it’s nothing bad. It just makes me wonder about his-well, he asked me what happened to the head that was there last night.”
Jerry frowned. “The what?”
“In the enclosure. He seems to think he saw a yellow jasper head in there, near the bones, or maybe it was quartzite. Look, keep this to yourselves, will you? I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. Not that it matters. Bruno already knows.”
Jerry stood leaning on the railing, silent and contemplative, pulling on his pipe.
“You mean he said it was there last night, but not this morning?” Gideon asked.
“Right. And it worried me, because-look, Gideon, this is not for public consumption either, but he got a little tiddly last night, which he tends to do most nights, no big deal, never during working hours, but this is the first time that he ever-well, hallucinated, I guess you’d have to call it. He even thought he remembered pointing it out.”
“He did,” Jerry said quietly.
TJ swung to face him. “Did what?”
“Point it out.”
She stared at him. “Jerry, I was right there. If he-”
“He didn’t say it was a head. He said… I don’t remember his exact words… he was flashing his light around, and he said, ”What’s that piece over there,“ or, ”See that thing over there,“ or something like that. Don’t you remember?”
“No!”
“Well,” Jerry said, “there was a lot of excitement, you were arguing with him-”
“What was he pointing at? How do you know it was a head? Did you actually see anything?”
“No, I wasn’t really paying attention. But maybe Ragheb saw it, or Ario.”
TJ shook her head. “No. I asked them, even though Dr. H told me not to.”
“Huh? Why would he tell you not to?”
“I think he thinks he was dreaming himself.” She hunched her shoulders. “He was pretty well potted, Jerry.”
“Yeah, he was that.” Jerry banged his pipe on his palm to knock out the dottle, pulled the pipe apart, and blew wetly through the stem. “Tiff,” he said slowly, “you don’t suppose that maybe there was something, and Ragheb came back during the night, and, well…”
“Stole it?” TJ said indignantly. “Of course not. And even if he’d wanted to, all he had to do was take it in the first place, before he ever came in to call us.”
“Maybe he didn’t see it until Dr. H pointed it out.”
“Jerry, I can’t believe you’re saying this. How can you believe Ragheb is a liar and a thief? He’s been here almost as long as we have, he’s the nicest, gentlest-”
“I’m just trying to look at all the angles, Tiff,” Jerry said peaceably. “Why would Dr. H imagine he saw a quartzite head?”
“Why would Ragheb steal it?” TJ countered.
They turned to Gideon as if they expected him to resolve the dispute, but Gideon had reached the end of his rope. He was beyond overtiredness now, finally ready for sleep, wondering only where he was going to find the energy to climb the stairs to the room. He tried unsuccessfully to smother a prodigious yawn.
TJ laughed. “Let’s get this poor guy upstairs before he collapses on us. He’s got a long day tomorrow; six-bit tour in the morning, and then off to Amarna in the afternoon.”
“Amarna?” Gideon said fuzzily. “I thought that wasn’t in the schedule anymore.”
“It wasn’t, but Forrest decided that artistic integrity demanded its inclusion after all. Even if we have to rush like hell through everything else.”
Gideon yawned again. “Good. I’d hate to miss it.”
“We really ought to get up,” Julie said.
“Mm,” replied Gideon.
Neither of them stirred. After a while Gideon gently brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek, pleased as always by the softness of her skin, pleased as always with himself for having her beside him morning after morning, night after night.
“I mean,” said Julie, “we can’t very well lie in bed all day like a couple of slugs. Not that this wasn’t a nice way to start the day.”
Gideon smiled. “I’d hardly say like a couple of slugs.”
“No,” she said, laughing. She turned on her side to face him, cradling his hand between her cheek and the pillow. Her eyes, glossy and ink-black, were a foot from his. “But we’re going to have to get going sometime. I hear they have a full day planned for us.”
“Whatever it is, it’s going to be downhill from here.”
He had awakened earlier than he’d wanted to, at 6:00, and silently gone to the dining room to bring back coffee from the twenty-four-hour urn. Julie had downed the first cup without quite waking up, which was normal even when she wasn’t suffering from jet lag. She had grunted something and held out the empty cardboard cup, and he had gone for refills. As always, the second one got her blood moving and her nerves functioning, and by the time she had finished it, she was not only speaking in intelligible words, she was feeling playful and affectionate.
He had wound up back in the bed, the time had flown by, and now, somehow, it was 7:30.
“Gideon,” she said when another five minutes had passed and they had yet to move, “do we really have to follow Dr. Haddon’s schedule? What’s the chance of our playing hooky and going out and seeing Luxor Temple? Just us?”