The Skin Map

  “I thank you for your care, my friend,” said Arthur. “But you do not have to do this.”

  “It is done,” replied the priest.

  He departed, and Khepri returned with the honey water and gave some to his patient. Xian-Li drank as much as she could, then said she would like to sleep. Arthur translated her words for the physician, who nodded, saying, “That is for the best.” He rose, taking up his stool. “I must go stay with a man with a broken arm. I will return when I have finished.”

  “Yes, go,” Arthur told him. “I will stay with her until you come back.”

  Arthur settled down to sit with his sick wife, holding her hand and, every now and then, dipping the cloth in the basin to wet it again before replacing it on her forehead. Xian-Li, for her part, drifted in and out of sleep. When she woke, Arthur offered her some more honey water, which she accepted, taking no more than a sip or two before laying her head back down.

  “Do you hurt anywhere?” he asked her once after she had drunk a little.

  “My neck is sore,” she said, her voice a dry rasp. “On the inside.”

  “Your throat, you mean,” corrected Arthur.

  “Yes.”

  “When Khepri comes back I will ask him for something to help.”

  She offered him a weak smile. “I am sorry, husband. I have disappointed you.”

  “Never!” protested Arthur. “I love you, Xian-Li. You could never disappoint me.”

  She slept through the rest of the morning. Khepri the physician returned at midday and made up a mixture of honey and spices, thinned with a little almond milk, to ease the pain in her throat and make swallowing more comfortable. He noted that the fever had not eased, nor had it abated by late afternoon when he came back with his father—also a physician—to seek his wisdom and advice.

  Arthur stood by as they held close conference with one another; he watched the two men nodding as they whispered back and forth on their stools. The elder man lifted Xian-Li’s unresisting hand and held it for a moment before replacing it on her breast. They talked some more, and then Khepri rose and came outside to where Arthur and Anen were hovering at the door.

  “It is our opinion that tainted food is not the cause of this illness,” he said.

  “No?” said Anen. “What then—can you tell?”

  “My father has seen this before,” replied the physician. “It is a fever which commonly afflicts children.”

  “I see,” said Arthur. “What can be done about it?”

  “It gives me no pleasure to tell you, my masters, but there is no cure. I am sorry.”

  “We just let nature take its course?” asked Arthur. “No. That is not enough.”

  “We will make her comfortable and pray that recovery is in the will of the gods for this soul.” The physician, his dark eyes full of sympathy, put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “I am sorry.”

  At a sign from Anen, the doctor returned to his patient. “Come with me, my friend,” said the priest, “and let us eat something.”

  “I could not eat a thing,” sighed Arthur. “I think I should stay here.”

  “We have a long night ahead of us. I will have food brought in.”

  A short while later, Anen returned with a company of priests bearing bowls of food, which they arranged on a low table with seating mats spread on either side. “I have ordered a sacrifice to be made in the temple for the return of health,” Anen told him. “They will perform the ceremony at the rising of the moon.”

  “Thank you,” said Arthur.

  They ate a silent meal together, Arthur picking at his food and watching the darkened door expectantly. Evening deepened around them, the stars kindling in the wide black expanse above. When it grew too dark to see, two young temple acolytes came with torches in iron stands; they placed one at the table and on either side of the door of the guesthouse, and then withdrew.

  Night drew on. Occasionally, one physician or the other came to the table for refreshment; Arthur went now and again to sit at his wife’s side. She slept the restless, troubled sleep of the sick, and though Arthur dutifully bathed her face and neck and feet with the cool water, it no longer seemed to bring her burning body any comfort.

  As midnight approached, Xian-Li began to lapse in and out of consciousness. She moaned and murmured in increasingly fretful sleep, sometimes calling out, the words garbled and indistinct. Then, suddenly, she would wake and struggle to rise, fearful, no longer knowing where she was. Arthur did his best to calm her and soothe her restless spirit, all the time fighting his own growing fears.

  The physicians, meanwhile, tried to get her to drink and continually refreshed the damp cloths. The last time she was able to drink, she vomited it all back up, and from then on could not be induced to take any more water. As the terrible night wore on, she began to sweat and shake with chills—so violently that once Khepri held her jaws together with his hands lest she shatter her teeth.

  Gradually, the shaking grew less strenuous, which Arthur took as a good sign. But Khepri said, “Her strength is failing. The fire inside is consuming her.”

  Arthur could but look on in helpless anguish as his young wife’s breathing grew ever more shallow and erratic. The sweating stopped. Her chest rose once and fell. Between one breath and the next, Xian-Li, her life devoured by the fever, expired. She was gone.

  It took a moment for Arthur to realise what had happened, and even then he could not grasp the awful finality of it. The end had come so quickly, and right up until the moment she died he had been certain she would pass the crisis. He had not had time to prepare for the possibility that she might not survive. Uncomprehending, he simply sat and stared at her beautiful body as the lines of tension in her face and limbs eased and she relaxed into death.

  A few moments passed, and then the two physicians bent over the body and began to unfold a linen cloth to cover the corpse.

  “No,” murmured Arthur. “Leave her be.”

  Khepri nodded to his father, who extended his palm in a gesture of respect and backed from the room. “I am sorry,” Khepri said. “It was the will of the gods. There was nothing to be done.”

  “What?” Arthur roused himself. “What did you say?”

  “We were powerless before the mighty will of the gods.” He glanced with sadness at the still body. “If you wish, I will begin making the arrangements for her embalming. It is best done quickly.”

  “No,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “Thank you, Khepri, but no. I will make my own arrangements.”

  “As you will, master.”

  Anen came in then and, seeing what he had already been told had taken place, he embraced his friend and expressed his sorrow. Then, spreading his hands over the body, he intoned a chant for the dead. Arthur listened, unable to make anything of it. When the priest finished, he turned and asked, “If you wish, I will have the body prepared for its journey into the afterlife.”

  “How long until the sun rises?” asked Arthur.

  “Not long. The night is almost gone.”

  Arthur turned and rushed into the courtyard. Cupping his hands to his eyes to shut out the glare of the torches, he quickly scanned the heavens. From among the billions of bright pinpricks of light, he located the one he hoped to see: a star of piercing intensity, easily the brightest light in the heavens.

  “Then we must hurry. There is not much time,” he said, rushing back into the guesthouse. Bending over the pallet, he gathered the still-warm body of Xian-Li into his arms.

  “What will you do?” asked the priest.

  “I’m taking her to reclaim her life.”

  Anen opened his mouth to protest. “But—”

  “Please,” said Arthur, cutting him off, “I must be at the ley before sunrise.”

  Anen saw from the set of Arthur’s jaw that it was no use arguing. “What do you require?”

  “Your chariot—is it still here?”

  “I will order another.”

  While the priest went to fetch t
he vehicle, Arthur wrapped his wife in the linen cloth Khepri had left for him. Then, when he heard the sound of the horses in the courtyard, he gathered up Xian-Li’s body and walked out. Together, they laid the corpse on the floor of the chariot, and Arthur started to climb up.

  “Have you ever commanded such as this?”

  Arthur admitted that he had not.

  “Then allow me,” said Anen, taking the reins from his friend’s hands. “Stand behind me and hold tight.”

  Arthur took his place in the chariot, and they rolled out into the darkened street and were soon on the road leading out of the city. By the time they reached their destination, the sky was pearling in the east. Wasting not a moment, they lifted Xian-Li’s body and arranged it so that Arthur could carry it more easily.

  As the first golden rays of the newborn sun struck the unnaturally straight path, Arthur started walking.

  “Where will you go?” Anen called after him.

  “There is a place beyond that star,” Arthur replied, indicating the solitary star still ablaze in the fast-fading sky. “If Xian-Li can be healed anywhere, it will be there—at the Well of Souls.”

  CHAPTER 34

  In Which a Tour Guide Is Engaged

  It has happened!” cried Lady Fayth. “We have made—”

  The nausea overtook her before she could finish. Turning away quickly, she bent over and vomited politely. Though he felt sorry for her, Kit did admire her form. Giles was also affected; the sturdy coachman swayed on his feet and then crumpled onto hands and knees, emptying the contents of his stomach into the dust at the side of the road.

  “Don’t try to fight it,” said Kit, sounding like a veteran of the wars. “Just breathe deep through your nose and let it wash over you.”

  This well-meant advice met with a cool reception from Lady Fayth. “You knave!” she muttered as soon as she could speak again. She dabbed her mouth with the back of her hand. “You knew full well it would make us sick.”

  “Well, yes, unfortunately it does rather—”

  “You might have warned us.”

  “I thought I did,” replied Kit lamely. “Did I not?”

  “You most certainly did not,” she fumed. “I would have remembered such a salient fact.”

  “Then I do most heartily apologise, my lady,” replied Kit stiffly. “It is in the nature of the leap, I’m afraid. It does monkey with your internal navigation system.”

  She glared at him. “What are you babbling about?”

  “It makes one feel seasick,” he explained. “But the feeling passes quickly, and one does seem to get used to it eventually. I feel quite normal, see?”

  “How pleasant for you.” She sniffed. Turning her eyes away from Kit, whom she held to be the source of her discomfort, she took in the sight of the sphinxes. “Heavens!” she gasped. “Where are we?”

  “Egypt somewhere, I reckon,” answered Kit. He looked to Giles, who was still kneeling in the dust. “How are you feeling?”

  The servant nodded and rose unsteadily to his feet, his skin a pale, waxy hue. “Better,” he said without conviction.

  Kit quickly scanned their surroundings. A more desolate landscape he could not have imagined: not a blade or twig of anything green to be seen; nothing but empty sky above and dusty, barren, rock-crusted hills all around. There was no one about, nor any human habitation—except, at the end of the sphinx-lined avenue, the immense black rectangle of a doorway carved into the side of the dun-coloured hill.

  “It looks like a temple or necropolis or something,” observed Kit. “If Cosimo and Sir Henry also landed here, they might have taken shelter there. I say we go investigate—see if we can find out anything.”

  Shouldering the bundles containing their provisions and weapons, the three started toward the temple, walking between the paws of the crouched sphinxes whose stone faces gazed on with remote and imperturbable dignity. Some of the statues had hieroglyphs on their pedestals, and some had clearly suffered wear and tear from sandstorms and the simple ravages of time—cracks and fissures in the stone, damaged feet or faces—but most were in fairly good condition.

  They proceeded along the broken road, alert to any sound or movement around them. The early morning breeze, though still cool, held the threat of heat to come. From somewhere high above, the lonely cry of a scavenging buzzard drifted down. Closer, they saw that the temple entrance rose on tiered platforms that formed low steps leading up to a massive door guarded by two enormous statues—one of a man in a tall plumed headdress holding an ankh in his hand, the other of a man in the striped headdress and heavily ornamented kilt of a pharaoh. Daunted by the yawning emptiness of the entrance and its giant guardians, they paused at the foot of the steps. “Shall we?” said Kit.

  “I think it only right that you go in first,” suggested Lady Fayth.

  “Sure.” He mounted the steps to the doorway and tried to peer into the dark interior of the temple. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone there?”

  No reply.

  “Hello?” he called again. “Anyone?”

  His voice reverberated through the empty interior and died away in the dark recesses of the rock-hewn edifice.

  “It’s safe,” he said, motioning for the others to join him. “There’s no one here. We have the place to ourselves.”

  Kit entered the temple. The air was dry and cool, the light dim. The roof had been pierced in places, allowing shafts of sunlight to penetrate the interior darkness and illuminate a veritable forest of stone pillars. In one of these rectangular pools of light a crude table had been erected, using bricks from the temple and a piece of old planking. Dusty rugs lay in a heap beside the table. The base of the nearest pillar was black with soot where fires had been lit. “Somebody has been here.”

  “More than one somebody, I would say,” Giles added, pointing to an array of footprints in the dust on the floor. “And perhaps not all that long ago.”

  “There are all sizes here.” Kit bent down for a closer look. Most prints bore the marks of a simple shoe without heels—a sandal, most likely—and some were barefoot. Many were scuffed and overtrod, suggesting people milling about. He straightened again and looked around. “Sir Henry and Cosimo might have been here as well, but there’s no way to tell for sure.”

  “Whether they were here or not is irrelevant,” Lady Fayth pointed out. “They are not here now.” She turned in a slow circle, letting her eyes sweep the dim, cavernous interior. “And there is nothing else of interest.”

  “Then we continue the search.” Kit turned and walked back to the doorway and out onto the steps. “Maybe we should leave the bags here while we have a look around.” He glanced at Giles, who was shaking his head. “No?”

  Kit followed the coachman’s gaze and saw, coming towards them along the avenue of sphinxes, a travelling company made up of at least eight camels surrounded by a small army of people on donkeys and on foot. “Oh,” said Kit. “It looks like we’ve got company.”

  “A genuine Egyptian caravan!” gushed Lady Fayth. “How truly exciting!”

  They waited and watched as the parade drew closer, and it became clear that the group was coming to the temple and that it was, to Lady Fayth’s disappointment, not an exotic desert caravan at all, but a passel of tourists; the Egyptians among them were guides and beggars. The lead camel stopped a few dozen yards from the entrance, and the camel jockeys made their beasts kneel so that the visitors could dismount. The newcomers were outfitted for a day’s adventure: dressed in elaborate khaki desert gear with multipocket jackets and loose trousers stuffed into tall boots. The men wore pith helmets and carried riding crops, and the ladies wore wide-brimmed hats held in place by gauzy scarves, and carried flyswatters. The Egyptians wore simple white robes and double-strapped sandals; a few sported chequered turbans.

  “By Jove!” shouted one of the men, throwing his leg over the crown of the saddle and sliding to the ground. “It is magnificent! Someone get a photo of me at the doorway, what!”


  “Tourists all right,” said Kit. At Lady Fayth’s uncomprehending glance, he added, “Travellers—they have come to see the temple.”

  “Whoever they are,” she observed, “they speak something very like English.”

  “True,” replied Kit. “Wait here, both of you. I’m going to talk to them.” He started toward the man who seemed to be the leader of the group. “Hello!” he called, giving the fellow a wave. “Hello! May I ask where you are coming from?”

  The man turned and saw the three travellers for the first time. “Upon my word!” he exclaimed. “You’re here awfully early. I say! They told us we’d have the place to ourselves.”

  “Yes, well, we wanted to get here before—before it got too hot, you see.”

  “Yes, quite,” replied the man, squinting up at the sun. “We’ve come from the Queen Hatshepsut.” Seeing Kit’s puzzled frown, he added, “It’s a boat. On the Nile? Just over those hills back there.” The man gestured vaguely behind him. “And you? I didn’t see any other boats at the mooring last night.”

  “No, we’re on foot.” Kit regarded the tatterlings beginning to swarm around them.

  “Ah! Roughing it, what?”

  “Something like that,” Kit admitted. “We were hoping—”

  Before Kit could finish, he was mobbed by a gang of urchins—barefoot, half-naked beggar children, all of them clamouring to be heard above the others, grabbing at his shirtsleeves and shouting, “Mister! Mister! You English, mister? You English? You have shillings, mister? Shillings!”

  “Sorry, no,” said Kit. “No—no shillings. Sorry.”

  “Shillings, mister! You have shillings! Give, mister. Give.”

  “I don’t have any shillings,” Kit said, more forcefully this time. “No shillings.” A dozen small hands snatched at his sleeves and trousers; small fingers wormed into his pockets. He raised his arms out of their reach and stepped back. “Look, I don’t have any money, see? No money. No shillings!”