Could that be the meaning of my October date?
So wondrous were the decorations that for a brief time I forgot my mission. I had flickering glimpses of snakes and lotus flowers, boats that floated in the sky, and fierce and terrible lions. There were baboons and hippos, crocodiles and long-necked birds. Men marched in gloriously decorated processions, carrying offerings. Women offered their breasts like life itself. Deities as regal and patient as emperors stood in sideways poses. It seemed crude and idolatrous, this mix of animals and animal-headed gods, and yet for the first time I recognised how much closer the Egyptians were to their gods than we are to ours. Ours are sky gods, distant, unworldly, while the Egyptians could see Thoth each time an ibis stepped across a pond. They could sense Horus with each flight of a falcon. They could report having talked to a burning bush, and their neighbours would accept the story calmly.
There was still no sign of Silano or Astiza. Had the soldiers led me astray – or was I walking into a trap? Once I thought I heard a footstep, but when I listened there was nothing. I found some stairs and mounted them, ascending in a twisting pattern like the climb of a hawk. Carved on the walls was an upward procession of men carrying offerings. There must have been ceremonies up here. I emerged on the temple’s roof, surrounded by a low parapet. Still not sure what I was looking for, I wandered amid small sanctuaries set on its terrace. In one, small pillars topped by Hathor made a gazebo-like enclosure reminiscent of a Paris park. In the northwest corner was a door leading to a small, two-roomed sanctum. The inner chamber had bas-reliefs showing a pharaoh or god rising from the dead in more ways than one: his phallus was erect and triumphant. It reminded me of the tumescent god Min. Was this the legend of Isis and Osiris I’d been told when we sailed toward Egypt? A falcon floated above the being about to be resurrected. Again, my poor brain could detect no useful clue.
The outer room, however, gave me a tingle of excitement. On the ceiling, two nude women flanked a spectacular circular relief crammed with figures. After studying it for a while, I decided the carving must be a representation of the sacred sky. Upheld by four goddesses and eight representations of the hawk-headed Horus – did they represent the twelve months? – was a circular disc of the symbolic heavens, painted with faded colours of blue and yellow. I spied signs of the zodiac again, not too dissimilar from what had come down to us in modern times: the bull, the lion, the crab, the twin fish. At the circumference was a procession of thirty-six figures, both human and animal. Could these represent the Egyptian and French ten-day weeks?
I craned my neck, trying to make sense of it. At the northern axis of the temple was a figure of Horus, the hawk, who seemed to anchor all the rest. Toward the east was Taurus, the bull, signifying the age in which the pyramids had been built. To the south was a half-fish, half-goat creature, and near it a man pouring water from two jars – Aquarius! This was the sign of the future age, centuries hence, and the symbol for the vital rising of the Nile. Aquarius, like the water symbol on the medallion around my neck, and Aquarius, like the sign on the lost calendar of L’Orient that I’d guessed pointed to October 21 ^ st.
The ceiling’s circle reminded me of a compass. Aquarius was oriented to the southwest.
I stepped outside, trying to get my bearings. A stone stairway led up to the parapet at the rear edge of the temple, so I climbed to look. To the southwest was another smaller temple, more decayed than the one I was in. Enoch had said there would be a small temple of Isis, and within it, perhaps, the mysterious staff of Min. Beyond it the dunes swept over the compound’s periphery wall, and distant hills glowed silver under cold stars.
I felt the medallion against my chest. Could I find its completion?
A second flight of stairs took me back to the ground floor. Its straightness was like the dive of a hawk that had spiralled upward on the other side. Now men with offerings were marching downward. Once again I was in the main temple, but a door to one side led again to the sands of the compound. I looked up. The main temple wall loomed above me, lion heads jutting like gargoyles.
My rifle ready, I walked to the rear, toward the smaller temple I’d seen. To my right, palms grew from the ruins of the sacred lake. I tried to imagine this place in ancient times, the dunes at bay, the causeways paved and shining, the gardens tended, and the lake shimmering as priests bathed. What an oasis it must have been! Now, ruins. At the temple’s rear I turned the corner and stopped short. Gigantic figures were carved on the wall, thirty feet high. A king and queen, I guessed from their headdress, were offering goods to a full-breasted goddess, perhaps Hathor or Isis. The queen was a slim and stylish woman with a towering crown, her arms bare, her legs long and slim. Her wig was braided, and a cobra like a golden tiara was poised above her forehead.
‘Cleopatra,’ I breathed. It had to be her, if Enoch was right! She was opposite her little temple of Isis, which sat about twenty metres to the south of the main building.
I glanced about. Still the compound seemed lifeless, except for me. I had the sense that it was poised, waiting. For what?
The Isis temple was built on a raised terrace, a drift of sand between it and the Cleopatra carving on the main building. Half the small temple was a walled sanctuary like the larger temple I’d just come from. The other half was open and ruined, a shadowy mass of pillars and beams, open to the sky. I climbed up broken blocks to the door of the walled section. ‘Silano?’ My query echoed back at me.
Hesitantly, I stepped inside. It was very dark, the only light coming from the door and two high openings barely big enough to fit pigeons. The room was taller than it was long or wide, and claustrophobic, its smell acrid. I took another step.
Suddenly there was a whir of wings and I instinctively ducked. Warm wind thrashed at me, extinguishing my light. Bats flew by, squeaking, scraping my scalp with leathery wings. Then they funnelled outside. I relit my candle with shaking hand.
Again, the walls were thick with carvings and traces of old paint. A woman I assumed was Isis dominated. I saw no sign of Min and his staff, or anything else. Was I on a wild goose chase? Always I felt like I was groping blind, with clues no reasonable man could understand. What was I supposed to see?
I noticed, finally, that this room was considerably smaller than the enclosed temple’s perimeter. There had to be a second chamber. I stepped back on the stone porch and realised there was a second door and high room, even narrower than the first, and just as baffling. This one, however, had a stone table, like an altar. The pedestal was the size of a small writing desk, perched in the room’s centre. It was plain, unremarkable, and I might have passed it by except for a peculiar occurrence. As I bent over the altar the chain round my neck came loose and snagged the pedestal. The medallion broke free and struck the stone floor with an audible clink. This had never happened before. I swore, but when I bent to retrieve it, what I saw arrested me.
Carved onto a floor slab were two faint Vs, overlapping like compass and square. In the Egyptian style they were geometric, and yet the resemblance was clear.
‘By the Great Architect,’ I muttered. ‘Can it be?’ I remembered Enoch’s script: The crypt will lead to heaven.
I refastened the medallion and stamped on the floor slab. It shifted. Something hollow was under there.
Kneeling in excitement now, my rifle set to one side, I pried with the blade of my tomahawk until I could grasp the slab. It lifted like a heavy trapdoor and released a rush of stale air, an announcement that it hadn’t been opened in a long time. Holding my candle, I leant over. The light glimmered on a floor below. Could there be treasure? Leaving my gun for a moment and sliding feet first, I dropped, falling ten feet and landing like a cat. My heart was hammering. I looked up. Easy enough for Silano to slide the lid back in place if he was watching me. Or was he waiting to see what I might find?