Charlie's War, part five

Continued from here

Cairo, Egypt

November 1919

Despite her fears, Charlie slipped into the role of being a wife with ease. It wasn't a difficult part to play – their house in the London area of Kensington had been beautiful and came equipped with a cook, a butler, a gardener, a maid, and a chauffeur. The servants did most of the work, leaving Charlie very little to do domestically, so she threw herself into learning more about hieroglyphics, hieratic, Coptic, and modern Arabic. Jack was shocked at how quickly she learned the complex languages and soon was bringing work home, asking for Charlie's help with translations. Not long after that, she was accompanying him into the offices at the Egyptian Exploration Society, where he introduced her to George Herbert, Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, the financial backer for the massive digs in the Valley of the Kings, and Gaston Maspero, Director of the Antiquities Department at the Bulak Museum in Cairo, and of course Jack's boss, Howard Carter.

Jack and Charlie impressed Carter greatly, reminding him of himself some ten years ago, when he'd first joined the EES. Carter immediately asked Jack and Charlie to accompany him to Egypt to assist in the as-yet unsuccessful excavations in the Valley of the Kings. Work had been continuing on and off in the area for nearly five years, and Carnarvon was getting impatient. Carter hoped that by injecting new blood and archaeologists newly graduated from school would help shake things up a bit and lead to the find of the century.

The Taylors didn't need even a portion of the week Carter gave them to come to their decision. It was a dream come true for both of them and they quickly sold their house, put their affairs in order – including updated wills reflecting their newly married status – and hopped on a ship that would take them to Calais, in the north of France, and then on a train that took them down to the tip of the Italian peninsula, then another ship that took them across the Mediterranean to Port Said, Egypt, and finally another train straight into the heart of Cairo.

The long trip ran together in Charlie's mind; one train station looked like another when one didn't actually leave one's sleeper car. But when she climbed down out of the train into the station in Cairo, she knew immediately that she was in Egypt. The mélange of languages that assaulted her ears – French, Greek, Arabic, even German – and the scents of dry, dusty air combined with foreign spices, frankincense, myrrh, and sandalwood made her giddy. She turned to Jack and grinned up at him. “I can't believe I'm here,” she said in a hushed, awed voice.

Jack chuckled and leaned over to kiss the crown of her head. “You're here, Bunny. And next week, we'll be in the Valley of the Kings, with shovels and pick-axes in our hands.” He flagged down a horse-drawn carriage, loaded first his wife, then their luggage into it, and then asked to be taken to the Shepheard Hotel. Charlie grinned; she'd long dreamed of staying where Napoleon headquartered his army during his invasion of Egypt more than a hundred years ago.

Sandwiched between the Nile River and Ibrahim Pasha Street, the Shepheard Hotel commanded a beautiful view of the city and the surrounding desert from its storied terrace, lined with potted palm trees, wicker chairs and tables, and waiters dressed in pristine white galabeyas and crimson fezzes. As Jack and Charlie sat and sipped thick, syrupy mint tea, he told her a little more of the history of the hotel. “Did you know that both Henry Morton Stanley and T.E. Lawrence sat here?”

“Lawrence of Arabia?” Charlie whispered in awe. She grinned and looked around, eyes wide with wonder and excitement as they fell on the Great Pyramid. “Did you ever think you'd sit here and see this view?”

Jack laughed softly, taking a great deal of pleasure in Charlie's excitement. “I did. But do you want to know a secret?” He leaned closer to her, putting his lips right against the delicate shell of her left ear and whispered, his breath warm and ticklish against her skin. “I never thought I'd be sharing it with someone whose beauty beggars that of the view around me.”

Charlie shivered and turned her face to his, kissing his lips softly to hide her blush. “I never, ever thought I'd be here, Jack,” she told him when they sat back in their seats. “Hank and I used to talk about traveling to Europe when we were older.” She frowned softly at the memory of her brother and blinked rapidly to deny the tears that those memories brought. “He would have loved this place,” she said quietly.

“He'd be so proud of you, Bunny,” Jack replied in an equally quiet voice, reaching over to take her hand and give it a gentle squeeze. He knew how hard Hank's death had hit her, how much she missed him, and he wanted to do something to take away some of that heartache. Seeing her face light up when she first saw the Pyramids had helped, but he knew just how deeply that pain ran.

A pair of waiters brought their mezze and Charlie stared at it in wonder. She did not recognize anything on the plates in front of her. Jack took pity on her and pointed to each dish and described it. There was hummus, a dip made of ground chickpeas and olive oil and flavored with roasted peppers; fattoush, a green salad covered with grilled eggplant and zucchini and small pieces of toasted pita, which were small, round grilled flatbreads; tabouli, another sort of salad made with bulgar wheat, parsley, tomatoes, cucumbers, mint, and olive oil; baba-ghanoug, which was sort of like hummus, but made with roasted eggplant and sesame seed oil; and koubeiba, torpedo-shaped croquettes made from minced lamb and bulgar wheat and fried in olive oil.

Charlie sampled a bit of everything and was surprised and delighted to discover that she loved it all and had seconds, except for the baba-ghanoug, but then she'd never been a fan of eggplant. After the waiters cleared away their plates, they quickly replaced them with an astounding selection of desserts. “You're trying to make me fat!” Charlie accused Jack, who laughed and shook his head.

“No, I'm just trying to introduce you to the cuisine of your new home,” he replied and then named and described every dish again for her. There was fakhfakina, which was a salad made with figs, pomegranates, apricots, and oranges, mixed with their juices and cream and served chilled; baked sweet potatoes, smothered with cinnamon-flavored honey; and qara’asali, a baked concoction of pumpkin, milk, butter, flour and sugar that reminded Charlie of Thanksgiving pumpkin pies.

“I cannot eat another bite,” Charlie said after trying everything and going back for seconds of the fakhfakina, which she decided she could live off forever. “I think you're going to have to carry me to our room.”

Jack smiled. “I could do that. In fact,” he said and stood, reaching down to draw her to her feet before scooping her up into his arms. “Shall we retire to our rooms, Mrs. Taylor?”

Charlie giggled when Jack picked her up and buried her face in his shoulder. “I didn't mean it, Jack!” she protested. “Put me down!”

“No, ma'am, I will not. You said I'd have to carry you and that is what I'm going to do.” Nodding to the people still gathered in the hotel's terrace and tipping a wink at their smirking waiters, Jack carried Charlie through the hotel and to the elevators, which took them straight up to their suite. Once inside, he gently threw her down on their bed, undressed her, and did to her what Napoleon wished he could have done to Josephine, if only the Empress was as brave and beautiful as Charlie.

Valley of the Kings, Egypt

November 1922

“This has to be it, Taylor,” Howard Carter said to Jack, three weeks into their final season in the Valley of the Kings. “Carnarvon is giving us this last season to find Tut and if we don't, he's pulling our funding and we'll be out in the cold. Six years out here and only a few bits of junk to show for it.”

Jack glanced once more at the collection of evidence spread out on the large map table in Carter's tent. There wasn't much in the way of concrete proof that Tut's tomb existed – a few pieces of faience pottery, a bit of gold foil, and a small cache of funerary items that bore Tutankhamun's seal gave a little credence to Carter's theory that the tomb had not yet been found. And the tiny village of workmen's huts and the calcite jars with Akhetaten-era carvings found at the entrance of another Pharaoh's tomb last season indicated that there had been extensive work done in the time not long after the Akhenaten's city had been abandoned. Carter had used these tenuous threads to convince Carnarvon to give him one more season. “But now we have those stairs, that door, and Carnarvon must feel that we've found something important. He's here, after all,” Jack pointed out. Then in a hushed, excited voice said, “We've found him, Howard. We've found Tut. I just know it.”

“Well, we've found something, that's for certain. I won't invite Fate to insert her heavy hand into the proceedings just yet,” Carter said with a small smile. “Tomorrow we'll know for certain.”

The group – comprised of Carter, Jack, Charlie and twenty Egyptian diggers – had begun excavating the workmen's huts on the first of November, uncovering the huts quickly and spending the next four days documenting them, before the dig beneath could begin in earnest. Late on the afternoon of the fourth, a single step leading downward had been uncovered; then by mid-morning on the fifth, twelve steps had been uncovered and suddenly, right in front of them, the upper half of a blocked entrance could be seen. With Charlie's help – since she was much smaller than any of them men and could fit into tighter spaces – Carter looked for a royal seal but could only find the seal of the necropolis. Still, the design was of the Eighteenth Dynasty and theories began to spin out of control – they'd found another cache, or the tomb of a major noble who'd built in the Valley with royal consent, or perhaps a place where the Boy Pharaoh's body and its most precious equipment had been moved for its safety, either from flooding or tomb raiders.

Carter had his diggers cover up the steps and left a small group of those he trusted most to stand guard while he, Jack, and Charlie went back to Cairo to make arrangements, and most importantly, send word to Carnarvon that his gamble had paid off. Early on the morning of the sixth, Carter had asked Charlie to send a cable to Carnarvon in England. She composed a short, fairly vague message: "At last have made discovery; a tomb with seals intact; re-covered same for your arrival; congratulations." Three weeks later, on the afternoon of the twenty-third, George Herbert, the fifth Lord Carnarvon, and his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, arrived at the dig.

Charlie was amazed at the English gentry. She had expected them to be snobby and cold and instead found them to be warm, generous people who worked right alongside Carter, Jack, and herself, getting their hands dirty and sharing meals with the natives. She and Evy – as the woman had insisted on being called – had even begun to form a friendship as both were happy to have female companionship in an otherwise male-dominated place.

The day after the Herbert's arrival in the Valley, the full flight of downward steps – all sixteen of them – had been uncovered and the expedition was faced with an intact door, complete with Tut's seals, which had been still been covered by rubble three weeks ago. The upper left portion of the doorway had been broken through by grave robbers, but the fact that the tomb had been resealed proved that it was not yet empty. Digging paused for a small celebration which lasted long into the night.

Charlie and Carter thoroughly photographed the door on the morning of the twenty-fifth and then it was carefully removed. A passageway emerged in the darkness, a passageway that was filled with limestone chips. The wind went out of everyone's sails, until Jack pointed out that the stones in the upper left portion of the rubble were of a different color. “Yes”, he said, “the tomb has been open and some things have probably been removed, but would they bother to go through all the trouble of sealing it again if it were empty?”

“He's right, of course,” said Carnarvon. “This tomb has been broken into twice – probably once only a few years after it was sealed, and then more recently. The robbers could only have gotten away with small pieces; the holes through which they made their ingress and egress are far too small to accommodate anything else.”

The following afternoon had the entire passageway cleared and the group was once more confronted with a sealed doorway, identical to the first one. This door, too, showed signs that robbers had broken through. “I'm starting to think this is going to be another cache,” Carter said, “and not a tomb. The configuration is all wrong – the arrangement of the stairway, the entrance passage and the doors remind me the other cache. They found Tutankhamun's seals there, too.”

“Well,” said Charlie. “There's only one way to know for certain. Open the door.”

With trembling hands, Carter made a tiny hole in the upper left corner. Darkness and blank space as far as an iron testing rod could reach showed that whatever lay beyond the door was empty, not filled in like the passageway they were now standing in had been. Candle tests as proof against noxious air were done and then Carter widened the hole a bit more and he peered inside.

Charlie reached for Jack and Evy's hands, finding them just as damp with nervous sweat as hers were. Carnarvon took a step forward, standing now very close to Carter's side. “Well, old man? Can you see anything?” he asked, finally unable to stand the suspense.

“Yes,” Carter replied. “Wonderful things.”

The next morning, November the twenty-seventh, Carter and Charlie once more documented the seals and photographed the door before it was removed. The wall of the room – which was later called “the Antechamber” – opposite the entrance was piled floor to ceiling with gold. Couches, boxes, chairs, chariots, statues, and so much more, had been grouped together in barely organized chaos. On the right-hand wall stood two life-sized statues, presumably of the Boy King himself, standing guard over yet another sealed door that bore the signs of having been breached at least once before.

Carter, Jack, and Charlie began to look through the organized chaos of the artifacts collected together in the Antechamber. As they worked, Jack noticed yet another door – this one obviously breached but not sealed – hidden away behind the couches on the far wall. Since Charlie was the smallest member of the group, she was selected to explore what lay beyond. Carefully she crawled through the tiny hole, gripping an electric torch, leaving her husband, his boss, and his boss's boss behind, stooping and peering over her shoulder with breathless anticipation.

“My God,” she whispered as she swept the room with her tiny light. If the Antechamber was organized chaos, this room – later called “the Annex” – was nothing more than pure pandemonium. Grave goods – faience pots, jewelry, a chariot, couches, chairs, tables, statues, even a small barque had been piled and tossed willy-nilly. There was no room for even tiny Charlie to maneuver in the mass of stuff. “It's so crowded in here,” she called out to Jack and Carter. “I don't know how we're going to document everything in here. There's no way we can do this in a single season!”

That night, Carnarvon, Carter, Jack, Charlie, and Evy sat down together to discuss the prodigious task ahead of them. Just clearing out the Antechamber would be a monumental undertaking. Each and every item had first to be photographed in situ, then sketched with a written documentation made on correspondingly numbered cards. Then the item was noted on a ground plan of the tomb. All of this had to be done before items could be removed from the tomb and loaded into wooden boxes to be transported by train to Cairo, where each piece would be further documented by the Cairo Museum’s curator. After this, the Curator would decide which pieces would be retained in Egypt, and which would be sent to the Egypt Exploration Society's other facilities around the world.

“It's like a game of pick-up sticks,” Jack said around a mouthful of tabouli and pita. “How will we ever move those sandals, for example? They're being held together by 3,000 years of habit alone; the threads have all long since disintegrated.”

Carter nodded and sipped his tea. “It will prove to be a matter of extreme difficulty, but I've no doubts that we'll be able to make a proper go at it. We can undertake an elaborate system of props and supports to hold one object in place while another is removed. Then we can place them on stretchers, wrap them in gauze and bandages and remove them that way.”

“Yes,” Carnarvon agreed. “That is a capital suggestion. We will use another tomb, perhaps Seti's, as a conservation laboratory, as well as a dark room for you to use in developing your photographs, Mrs. Taylor.” Charlie readily agreed and over the next seven weeks, the Antechamber was slowly emptied of its contents, including the two life-sized statues.

Finally, on February the seventeenth, 1923, the Antechamber was cleared and Carter began dismantling the sealed door that stood between the two statues. After approximately ten minutes of work, he'd made a hole large enough to insert an electric torch into. He was presented with a wall – floor to ceiling – of pure gold. “We've found the sepulchral chamber,” he said in an awed, shaky voice.

After the door and most of the wall surrounding it were removed, they discovered that the chamber contained a massive shrine made from wood, gilded with gold foil and inlaid with a brilliant blue porcelain – Egyptian faience at its finest. Charlie remarked later that it was the exact shade of her husband's eyes. The shrine was sixteen feet long, ten feet wide, and nine feet tall. There were only eighteen inches of clearance between the walls of the shrine and the walls of the chamber itself.

Over the next two months, work on the items recovered in the Antechamber continued. Carter and Carnarvon both determined that the conversation of these artifacts took precedence over dismantling and moving the shrine. As the group worked steadily, word spread of their amazing find, and soon the entrance to the tomb was surrounded by hundreds of tourists, newspaper reporters and photographers, and even a motion picture camera crew. When stretchers laden with artifacts covered in gauze were carried out of the tomb, the workers were met with cheers, applause, and the pop of camera flashes. Photographs of Carnarvon, Carter, Jack, Charlie, and even Evy were published in just about every newspaper in the entire world, making them instant heroes and celebrities.

Egyptian fever gripped the world, insinuating itself into every facet of life. Masses of mail and telegrams deluged the team, and people tried to use their money and their influence to arrange tours of the tomb. Even fashion and architecture began to reflect the obsession; clothing with ancient Egyptian influences began appearing in magazines from New York to Paris, and Grauman's Theatre in Los Angeles, and even Lenin's tomb in Moscow, were built with obvious Egyptian styles.

As the rainy season began in late March, work tapered off in order to protect the expedition from a plague of mosquitoes, whose bite brought with it the very deadly threat of malaria. Carnarvon received one such bite on his cheek, but it was not malaria that killed him on April fifth, 1923. It was a blood infection due to aggravating the bite by shaving over it that ended his life and his sponsorship of Carter's digs. It was also an awful foreshadowing of what would happen just a week later.

Continued here

Miracle Day

Nabta Playa plateau, Nubian Desert

Year 13 of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s Rule, second month of Shemu, day 14

Nefertiti had been away from her beautiful palace for more than two handfuls of days now, sleeping on a rough cot in a dirty canvas tent or on the deck of a tiny boat that seemed suspiciously unseaworthy, surrounded by animals and slaves and eunuchs. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d bathed properly or seen her glorious husband or played with her daughters in the cool shade of a covered courtyard. But all that would soon change. Today was the day they’d open the Sky Gate, and she could finally return to Akhetaten and reunite with the Pharaoh and her daughters. And while her husband’s kingdom would be safe for another year, she wasn’t quite so sure of her own safety.

In the past month, Meritaten had taken to rather publicly voicing her displeasure with not yet being named the Keeper of the Book and her mother’s successor. Nefertiti’s ladies had brought to their mistress a number of rumour concerning the young princess meeting with poisoners and other assassins as she planned a coup to become the real power behind Akhenaten’s throne, just as her mother was currently. Nefertiti had hired tasters for her own meals and had doubled the number of eunuch guards around her, but still she didn’t feel safe. Even in the middle of the Nubian Desert, more than sixty iteru away from her daughter’s influence, she did not feel safe.

Still, the Sky Gate must be opened, the spell her lord and husband had chosen for that year’s Miracle must be read, and the continuation of the Aten’s glorious kingdom must be perpetuated. So Nefertiti made the long, exhausting journey into the heart of the dangerous Nubian Desert and camped at the edge of the stone circle that pre-dated her own civilisation by more than a thousand years. On the morning of the fourteenth day of the second month of Shemu, in the midst of the hottest part of the year, the stars of the Hunter’s Belt aligned perfectly with the inner stones of the circle, and the High Priestess of Hathor’s Cult–a small group of women to which Nefertiti, her mother, her mother’s mother, and all their mothers stretching back in time belonged–could open the Sky Gate, read from the Book, and be heard by the gods.

The Queen awoke long before dawn and began preparations for the spell weaving she must begin at the exact second the stars and stones were in alignment. First she bathed as well as she could given her circumstances, then she donned her best linen dress and a robe made from the skin of some spotted hunting cat that lived far beyond the farthest southern border of the kingdom of Kush. Then she slipped her feet into delicate leather sandals and left her tent. Her most trusted handmaiden, Oshairana, and two eunuchs followed her, carrying a jar of water and the Book with them. Nefertiti had been fasting since they arrived on the plateau two days ago and would continue taking nothing more than a little water mixed with honey until after she had performed the Miracle.

Nefertiti seated herself cross-legged in the centre of the stone circle, right next to the Altar Stone, the middle of the three alignment stones, and fell into the meditative trance that helped her collect her will and harness the power of her own heka, her own powerful life force. And so she would remain until just before the Aten rose above the eastern horizon, gracing the land with His beautiful face once more.

“Mistress. The Aten comes!” Oshairana’s delicate, soft voice pierced Nefertiti’s meditative trance, and the Queen opened her eyes to peer directly east of where she sat. The horizon was golden above the line of far hills, and Nefertiti rose from her seated position, giving her handmaiden a thankful nod before reaching for the Book.

It was a heavy thing, its covers fashioned from thick clay tablets and held together by thin strips of leather. The pages inside were delicate papyrus sheets, beautifully illustrated with paint made from crushed gemstones and pure gold taken from her husband’s private mine less than half an iteru from the very spot where she now stood. Laying the Book on the Altar Stone, she glanced towards the heavens and saw that the three stars were very nearly in alignment. She hurriedly opened the Book and carefully paged through it until she came to the spell Akhenaten had selected as this year’s Miracle.

Keeping her hand on the Book, she raised her face to the east and watched as the Aten awoke and stretched out His life-giving rays towards her. Just before one of them penetrated the very centre of the circle’s eastern-most trilithon and caressed the Altar Stone in front of her, Nefertiti released her heka in an explosive breath and began her incantation, weaving the power into a key that would open the Sky Gate.

Directly above her head, three points of light appeared first as pin-pricks, then gradually grew wider, soon becoming gaping black holes in the sky. They joined, forming a single blue-edged maw through which nothing could be seen but unending blackness. Nefertiti’s eyes reflected this emptiness, the black nothing in the sky swallowing down any trace of colour in her irises and even consuming the white of her sclera. Her dress whipped around her ankles in a whirlwind that affected only her; a halo of blue, crackling energy surrounded her, arcing between her fingers and the Book, the Altar Stone and the two other stones on either side and the ground at her feet.

The Aten’s rays touched the stone upon which the Book rested and the Sky Gate was finally open. Lowering her face from the Aten’s arrival, the Queen read in a loud voice:

“Aten sits on his Throne of Millions of Years, and there assemble for him the Nine Gods with Hidden Faces who dwell with him in the Mansion of the Sun. O you who sit on your thrones, let me address you and beseech you on behalf of my lord and husband, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, he who wears the pschent, he who is called Meryaten Wer-nesut-em-Akhetaten Wetjes-ren-en-Aten, he who is the Son of the Sun. Let him sit on the throne of Aten, let him be reborn and go forth in the shape of a living spirit whom the common folk worship on earth. Let those who would harm him be driven off from the land of the Aten. Let him see the Aten, let him go forth against his enemies, let him be vindicated against them in the tribunal of the Great Aten, in the presence of the Great Aten. He who is the most trusted heir of the Great Aten, his name will be strong for you and assuredly you will live daily through him.”

Nefertiti let the rest of her collected heka go in a soft sigh and closed the Book. The swirling hole in the sky above her head slowly separated into three individual points of light once more and shrank away until they blinked out of existence. Nefertiti’s eyes went back to normal and she, her handmaiden, and the two eunuch guards held their breath now, returning their gazes to the eastern horizon, and waited for the Aten’s response to the sorceress’s appeals. If the sun’s light rose from where it now caressed the Altar Stone and lit up Nefertiti’s face, the Great God would grant her wishes for the year and Akhenaten’s kingdom would be safe from invasion. But if no light touched the Queen, it would mean that the Aten was displeased with his Son, and Akhenaten’s kingdom and throne would be in terrible danger.

The light of the Sun slowly crept up the Altar Stone and illuminated the Queen’s linen dress, then the long, slender column of her throat and finally, graced her beautiful face. All four Egyptians breathed a profound sigh of relief. Their world would be safe for another year; the Aten was pleased with his Earthly Kingdom, and would grant the Queen’s wishes on behalf of His Son, Akhenaten.

The North Palace, Akhetaten, City of the Sun

Year 14 of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s Rule, second month of Akhet, day 9

“No, Oshairana,” Nefertiti said urgently, pressing a clay tablet and the Book into her handmaiden’s arms. “You must do this for me. Meritaten can never have this knowledge. She will not use it for the Aten’s glory but for her own. You must take these and hide them away. Hurry!”

“But mistress–”

“Oshairana, go. Now. Before that daughter of Ammut comes for me again.” The Lady of the Two Lands pressed a kiss against Oshairana’s forehead and gently shooed her out of the Royal Suite before firmly closing and barring the door.

The tiny Nubian slave girl, who had been raised at Nefertiti’s feet and was as close to the Queen as the Pharaoh himself, wept openly as she stood in the darkened hallway of the North Palace. Since the last Miracle Day, the Princess Meritaten had made two separate attempts on her mother’s life. Only Nefertiti’s physician’s quick actions saved her from a painful death by poisoning. The Queen feared she would not survive a third attempt and so had entrusted Oshairana with the tablet necessary for opening the Sky Gate and the Book of Aten's spells, and bade her find a safe hiding place, revealing it only to Nefertiti’s daughter, Ankhesenamen, after she became Tutankhaten’s wife and Queen.

Oshairana ran from the Palace, slipping out silently through the Garden Room, scaling over the walls one-handed, and landing in the soft sand between the palace complex’s most outer wall and the road that led south into the city. Staying in the shadows of the buildings that lined the Royal Chariot Route, she quickly made her way to a T-intersection and turned east, moving through the shadows past the great Desert Altars, toward the Royal Wadi, which was located just an iteru away now.

The handmaiden had decided she would hide the tablet and the Book in the Pharaoh’s tomb, which was still being built. She would hide them in the dais upon which the Royal Sarcophagus would sit. It was the perfect place. No one but a Pharaoh could enter a tomb after it was sealed. The knowledge of the Cult of Hathor would be safe until such time as its location could be passed on to Nefertiti’s chosen heir.

Just before sunrise, Oshairana entered the Pharaoh’s unfinished tomb, silently, reverently walking with her head bowed. There were workmen’s tools in a basket by the entrance and she stooped to pick up a hammer and chisel. Setting down her precious bundle for just long enough to carve out a hole in the dais, the young girl set the tablet and the Book into the hole and then quickly filled it back up, packing down the rock chips and smoothing a layer of sand over it. Then she replaced the tools in their basket and left the tomb, racing back to the Palace as fast as she could go.

When she arrived at the North Palace, it was in an uproar. Servants and guards were weeping and tearing at their hair, flinging themselves bodily on the ground, screaming and keening. Oshairana grabbed a passing guard by his forearm and demanded, “What has happened? Why is everyone screaming and crying?”

“The Lady of the Two Lands and her daughter, Meketaten, have died!” the guard shouted at her and shook her hand off his arm before he jogged away, leaving the handmaiden to stare dumbly after him in utter incomprehension. Died? How? When? Oshairana shook herself and set off towards the Royal Suite, certain that the guard was misinformed. Nefertiti couldn’t be dead; Oshairana had just spoken to her a few hours ago.

The doors to the Royal Suite were hanging broken off their hinges, bits of wood scattered on the floor at the entrance to the Suite. There were four Medjay guards standing on either side of the doorway and inside, the Pharaoh himself sat on a couch, his face covered by his hands, shoulders shaking in silent grief. Standing around him wearing expressions of equal grief and bewilderment were his vizier, Ahmes, Nefertiti’s Steward, Meryra, and Meritaten herself. Seeing the Pharaoh in such a candid and private moment stunned Oshairana, and she stood stock-still, staring at the scene before her.

Meritaten’s head snapped up and an expression of rage filled her eyes. “There she is!” she shouted, pointing at Oshairana. “Medjay! Arrest her! She killed my mother!” The guards sprang into action, roughly grabbing Oshairana and pinning her hands behind her.

The Pharaoh’s hands dropped away from his face and he looked up at Ahmes with confusion. “I know this girl,” he said, standing and moving forward toward Oshairana. “She is my Beloved's handmaiden. Nefertiti loves...loved...her as a daughter.” He stopped just a few cubits away and stared at the girl, who looked back at him, her eyes dark with fear. “Did you kill Nefertiti?” he asked in a soft voice.

“No, my Lord!” Oshairana said desperately, pleading with the Pharaoh.

Meritaten boldly stepped between her father and the servant. “Of course she did, my Lord Father. She poisoned my Lady Mother and my Royal sister and then fled.” The Princess gave Oshairana a dangerous look, reminding the handmaiden of a crocodile before it strikes. “She came back to watch us find their bodies and grieve. She must be executed, my Lord Father.”

Ahmes slid up next to the Princess, moving silently on the stone floors like a snake moves over the desert sands. “I will see to this, my Lord,” he said in a voice like the wind across bare rock. “You must rest now. Meritaten will take care of you now.” The Princess nodded and a complicated look passed between her and the vizier before they turned to the Pharaoh, putting their arms around him comfortingly.

Akhetaten stared a moment longer at Oshairana and the expression of betrayal and despair in his eyes caused the young girl’s heart to break in her chest and finally, she wept. He nodded to Ahems and allowed Meritaten to draw him away, deeper into the most private areas of the suite. The Medjay dragged Oshairana away, followed by Ahmes, and threw her in a storage magazine, bolting the door from the outside.

Somehow Meritaten had succeeded in killing her mother, and somehow Meketaten had gotten in her sister’s way, too. Oshairana curled up on the dirt floor of the tiny, windowless room and wept bitter tears. Her life was over now; in just a few hours, she would be beheaded in the courtyard of the Great Palace in the Central City. But she would die knowing that her mistress’s most prized possessions and the secrets they contained would be safe forever from Meritaten’s grasp.