The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur (бесплатные полные книги .TXT) 📗

"Although that red hair is almost certainly dyed with henna."

"It is weird to think that, although he lived so long ago, he almost

succeeded in killing us,'Nicholas said softly.

"In what land was he born? He never tells us that in the scrolls. Was it

Greeceor Italy? Was he from one of the Germanic tribes, or was he of

Viking stock? We will never know, for he himself probably did not know

his own origins."

"There he, is again in the next panel." Nicholas pointed down the arcade

to where the unmistakable face of the eunuch appeared in the throng that

knelt in homage before the throne on which sat Pharaoh and his queen.

"Like Hitchcock, he seems to like to appear in his own creations."

They went on past the treasure stalls in which were stored plates and

goblets and bowls of alabaster and bronze chased with silver and gold,

polished bronze mirrors and rolls of precious silk and linen and woollen

cloth that had long ago rotted to shaggy black amorphous heaps. On the

walls that divided these from the next set of stalls they saw reenacted

the battle with the Hyksos in which Pharaoh had been struck down, the

arrow shot by the Hyksos king lodged in his breast. Then in the next

panel Taita, the surgeon, bent Over him with the surgical instruments in

his ed barb from deep in his hands, removing the blood-smear flesh.

Now they came to alcoves in which were stacked hundreds of cedarwood

chests. The boxes were painted with the royal cartouche of Mamose, and

with scenes of the king at his toilet: lining his eyes with kohl,

painting his face with white antimony and scarlet rouge, being shaved by

his barbers and dressed by his valets.

"Some of those chests will contain the royal cosmetics," Royan murmured,

'and some of them will be Pharaoh's wardrobes of clothing. There will be

costumes in them for ack every occasion in his after-life. I long to be

able to unp and examine them."

all panels showed the mart iage of the The next set of  king to the

young virgin, Taita's mistress. The face of Queen LostTis was tendered

with loving detail. The artist gloated on her beauty and exaggerated it,

his brush strokes caressing her naked breasts and lingering on all her

virtues until they epitomized feminine perfection.

"How much Taita loved her," Royan murmured, and there was envy in her

voice. "You can see it in every line he drew."

Nicholas smiled softly and put his arms around her shoulders.

There were hundreds more wooden chests stacked in  the next alcoves.

Painted on the lids were miniatures of the king decked in all his

jewellery: his fingers and toes were thick with rings and his chest was

covered with pectoral medallions, while bangles of gold adorned his arms

and bracelets his wrists. In one portrait he wore the double crown of

the two kingdoms of Egypt united, the red crown and the white with the

heads of the vulture and the cobra on his brow. In another he wore the

blue war crown, and on a third the Nemes crown with gold and lapis wings

that covered his ears.

"If each of those chests contains the treasures depicted on its lid-'

Nicholas broke off, unable to continue the thought. The possibility of

such riches was daunting, and the imagination balked at the magnitude of

it.

"Do you remember what Taita wrote in the scrolls? "I cannot believe that

such a treasure was ever before accumulated in one place at one times'T

Royan asked him. "It seeffLs that it is all still here, every single gem

and grain of gold. The treasure of Mamose is intact."

Beyond the treasury there was another alcove lined with shelves on which

stood the ushabti figures: dolls made of green glazed porcelain or

carved from cedarwood. They were an army of tiny figures, men and women

from all the trades and professions. There were priests and scribes and

lawyers and physicians, gardeners and farmers, bakers and brewers,

handmaidens and dancing girls, seamstresses and laundrymaids, soldiers

and barbers, and common labourers.

Each of them carried the tools and accoutrements of his or her trade.

They would accompany the king to the after world and there would work

for Pharaoh, and would go forward in his place if he were ever called

upon to perform a service for the other gods.

At last Nicholas and Royan came to the end of this fabulous arcade, and

found their way closed off by a series of tall, free-standing screens,

tabernacles that had been once fine white linen mesh but were now

decayed and rotted into ribbons and streamers, dirty and shabby as old

cobwebs, And yet the stars and rosettes of shining gold Now, still

hanging in the that decorated these curtains were mesh like fish in a

fisherman's net. Through this ethereal web of silken wisps and golden

stars they could make out the shape of another gateway beyond.

actual tomb," Royan

"That must be the entrance to the thin veil between us and the

whispered. "There is only a king now.

tated at the threshold, gripped by a strange They hesi the final step

reluctance, to take an old warrior, Mek Nimmur had seen and treated most

of the injuries that a man might sus in on the battlefield. His little

guerrilla group did not have a doctor, or even a medical orderly.

Mek himself treated most of his casualties, and he always  had a medical

kit close at hand.

He had the men carry Tessay to one of the huts near the quarry, where,

screened by the grass walls, he stripped her of her tattered clothing

and treated her injuries. He abrasions with disinfectant, and cleaned

her burns and clean field dressings- Then covered the worst of them with

he rolled her gently on to her stomach and snapped the which glass phial

off the needle'of the disposable syringe wh was preloaded with a

broad'spectrum antibiotic. -and he said, "I She winced at the sting of

the needle, am not a very good doctor."

other. Oh, Mek! I thought I would would have no ared never see you

again. I did not fear death as much as I fe that."

He helped her dress in the spare clothing from his pack, a sweatshirt

and fatigues that were many sizes too large for her. He rolled up the

cuffs for her, and his touch soldier.

was gentle. His hands were those of a lover, not a she whispered through

her must look so ugly," swollen, black-scabbed lips.

"You are beautiful he denied it- "To me you will always be beautiful."

He touched her cheek carefully, so as not to harm the raw burns that

covered it.

At that moment they heard the gunfire. It was still faint with distance,

borne down from the north on the rain winds.

Mek stood up immediately. "It has begun. Nogo is attacking at last it's

all my fault. I told him-'

"No," he told her firmly. "It is not your fault. You did what you had to

do. If you had not, they would have hurt you even worse than this. They

would have attacked us, even if you had told them nothing."

He picked up his webbing belt and strapped it around his waist. From far

off they heard the crumping detonation of exploding mortar shells.

"I have to go now," he told her.

"I know. Do not worry about me."

"I will always worry about you. These men will carry you down to the

monastery. That is the assembly point.

Wait for me there. I cannot hope to hold Nogo for long.