Kit, leaning over the mummy, scanned the interior of the coffin, but saw no boxes, chests, or bundles of any kind. He felt the heat of discovery begin to fade into the gloom of disappointment once more. “Well, what do you think? Should we unwrap him?” he asked doubtfully.
“We do not have the proper equipment,” said Thomas. “But I doubt we would find anything. I am sorry. I fear we have been grossly misinformed.”
“I guess.” Kit, miserable with frustration, moved to the painting of the priest holding the map and pointing to the star. What was the old boy trying to tell them?
“Kit Livingstone!” said Khefri suddenly. “Look here. The headrest!”
The doctor returned to the sarcophagus. “What sharp eyes you have, my boy,” breathed Thomas. “I do believe you’re right…”
Kit turned to see the doctor and Khefri leaning over the mummy once more. Crossing the distance in three bounds, he watched as Thomas reached down beside the linen-wrapped corpse. “Here, give me a hand. Lift the mummy-gently, carefully… there. Got it!” He straightened, and in his hand was a square of something wrapped in linen; it looked like a mummified sofa cushion. “Our friend Anen was using it as a pillow.”
“Here-let’s get it out into the light where we can see it better,” suggested Kit, already heading for the door.
Out in the daylight, the carefully wrapped packet was examined for any external markings. There were none; the linen bindings were the same as those used to swathe the mummy. “I will enter this find in the ledger,” said Thomas, moving towards his station beneath the canopy. “Then we shall open it.”
If Kit had had his way, he would have torn off the bandages then and there, but he agreed and followed the doctor to the table and watched with mounting impatience as Thomas made his entry. Then, handing Kit a thin-bladed knife, he passed the parcel to Kit along with the admonition to be very careful and take his time so as not to damage the delicate artefact within.
With trembling fingers, Kit slit open the top layer of bands and began unwinding the long narrow strips.
One after another, the layers were removed-seven in all-and as each fell away, excitement grew until Kit was almost hopping from foot to foot. The last layer of binding strips was unwound and there, on the table before them, lay a pair of wooden plaques tied with a cord of braided hemp that had been died red. The plaques were olive wood, raw and unvarnished, but covered with columns of black writing-not hieroglyphics, nor any language Kit had ever seen before.
He licked his lips. “Do you recognise the script?”
The doctor raised his glasses and bent down to scrutinise the writing, so close his nose almost touched the ancient wood. “I cannot say that I have ever encountered it.” He clucked his tongue. “Alas, I don’t know what it might be.”
The cord was tied with a simple knot, and the doctor reached for it, then hesitated. “I think,” he said, pushing the bound wooden plaques towards Kit once more, “that you should have this honour.”
Kit, his mouth dry, tugged at the woven cord, which parted as the ancient fibres shredded beneath his fingers. He brushed aside the disintegrating fragments and, holding his breath, lifted the top wooden plate. There, covered with a thin square of gossamer-fine linen, pressed like a rare leaf between the preserving sheets of a scrapbook, lay an irregular scrap of parchment almost translucent with age. The fine-grained leather, thin as gossamer and brittle as a scarab shell, was covered with a wild scattering of the most superbly etched symbols in dark blue.
Like a shadow shrivelled by the noonday sun, doubt vanished at the sight, and Kit knew that he had found the Skin Map.
PART FOUR
The Language of Angels
CHAPTER 21
In Which the Scholarly Inquiry Bears Strange Fruit
D ouglas Flinders-Petrie stood beneath the dripping eaves marvelling at the pageant. There were maids with pails of milk on yokes across their shoulders, ferrying their wares to the college inns; ironmongers selling skewers and sconces; bakers with trays of fresh bread on their heads hurrying across the square; vendors in ramshackle booths selling candles, ribbon, cloth, cheese, and spices. A butcher working from the back of an open wagon, carving up the carcass as required by his customers; a pie seller with a handcart, shouting for business; a farmer with braces of trussed and squawking chickens strolling through the milling throng; and on and on, like a live action study for a Brueghel painting.
How any of the students could concentrate on their professor, who was holding forth a few dozen paces away, Douglas could not fathom. But the lecturer, tall and gaunt upon his wooden crate, lifted his voice above the general din and declaimed in precise Latin on the subject of the day while the students, dressed in scholars’ robes of green and blue, faces earnest beneath the level brims of their square hats, sat or lounged on bales of straw that had been dragged together to form a loose semicircle around him. Not a few of the townsfolk stood listening as well, sometimes calling out facetious answers to the rhetorical questions posed by the renowned teacher.
It was the professor Douglas had come to see, the sole reason he had so painstakingly polished his Latin and assembled the wardrobe, studied the history, manners, and customs in order to make this trip to the mid-1200s. Therefore, Douglas studied him intently. A trim, solemn-faced fellow of middle years with a strong nose and high-domed head, Roger Bacon-doctor, professor, scientist, and theologian-had established himself as a prime moving force in the fields of academia that were his domain: anatomy, medicine, science, alchemy, philosophy, and theology. He wore his dark hair short and tonsured like any other priest of his stripe, and his simple brown Franciscan robe, though threadbare and frayed at hem and sleeve, was clean, his belt of braided cord neatly tied.
At one point in the lecture, some local youths muscled their way to the fore and began talking loudly and making rude imitations of the professor standing on his wooden box. From this Douglas grasped another fact of his research: the petty jealousy of some of the townsfolk of what was increasingly considered the educational elite in their midst. Some, like the crude yokels Douglas observed, felt themselves hard done by a system that seemed to favour those they considered transient interlopers and effete snobs. Indeed, owing to his propensity for unorthodox notions and the inexplicable behaviour that often accompanied his various experiments, the esteemed man of science was steadily establishing himself as a leading eccentric, if not a cap-and-bell fool, in the court of public opinion.
The troublemakers pursued a rather halfhearted attempt to interrupt the proceedings, until two bulky bailiffs with long pikes appeared and moved them along. Order restored, the open-air symposium continued. Douglas turned his attention to the lecture and tried to follow it as best he could. The Latin was accomplished-fluent and fluid, eloquent, and elegant in expression-and so highly polished by years of scholastic application that even when Douglas knew the words being spoken it was difficult to ascertain what sense was being conveyed. The students, and a smattering of townspeople, seemed to grasp the meaning of what Douglas eventually concluded was a discourse on the nature of the universe and the place of reason in framing the human conception of reality.
It might well have been riveting stuff, but it took all of Douglas’ newly acquired expertise in the ancient language just to identify the subject; actually following the subtle nuances of the argument were well beyond his nascent abilities. Still, he had a basic general idea of the flow if not the particulars, and anyway he had not come to sit at the feet of the learned professor. He was on a far more important mission.
“Snipe!” Douglas hissed under his breath. “Do not throw that.” He had seen his pugnacious assistant fingering a rotten pear he had picked up from the gutter on their way to the lecture. “Drop it now.”