Sphinx (17 page)

I returned to Isabella’s desk. The ghost of her presence hung in the air. I remembered her sitting there in the lamplight that last night, pensive as she studied the illustration of the astrarium, her long fingers trailing along the edge of the paper. For a moment I allowed myself to remember the scene, seeing her again, naked, her hair spilling down her back. It felt inconceivable that I would never be with her again, and yet here in my hand was the one thing she’d been searching for, the ultimate achievement that she had died for. I stared down at her desk, lost in thought. Then, my thoughts suspended in the stilled air, I remembered something else. That small gesture, almost invisible, the slipping of something under the ink blotter. I broke open the desk lock. Atop a pile of papers sat an envelope, my name written on it in Isabella’s distinctively neat hand. Staring down, grief clutched at my chest. I fell back into the chair, waiting for it to pass.

I propped the envelope up against the lamp stand, stalling the moment of opening it and glancing at the papers it had been lying on. On top of the pile was a yellowed document with the title
Nectanebo’s Priestess and the Pharaoh’s Ba
. The author was Amelia Lynhurst. This had to be the thesis that Isabella had told me about, the one that had finally discredited the Egyptologist.

I forced myself to look back at the sealed envelope that had my name on the front. Why hadn’t Isabella trusted me more? Why had she held back about the significance of the astrarium, the danger involved in finding it? She’d trusted Faakhir with the truth but not me. Had I been so unapproachable, so cynical, so disbelieving?

Resolved to face whatever she had to say to me from beyond the grave, I opened the envelope quickly. Under my fingertips the expensive notepaper felt like silk, like her skin. A trace of her distinctive scent - a mixture of musk and jasmine - was faintly discernible. Closing my eyes, it was easy to imagine her heavy hair brushing across the paper, leaving its own olfactory signature.

‘Don’t you dare try to give meaning to a pointless death, Isabella!’ I shouted, swept up by sudden rage. ‘No one could have predicted that earth tremor. No one! Not even me!’

I punched the cushion on the chair, anger and frustration pounding through me, and the fabric ripped, sending feathers flying up into the air. They floated back down to the floor like lazy snow, covering the envelope at my feet.

The call to afternoon prayer sounded: haunting and melodious. Time was passing. I walked over to the balcony window. Below I could see a gardener pruning a magnolia tree. The simple intent of his gestures seemed so real against the extraordinary events that had begun to shape my choices. Yes, I was intrigued, but rational instincts told me to stay away. And yet, there was Isabella, her hands outstretched, asking me to carry on. I worried that she had never confided fully in me because she feared I wouldn’t have believed her. If I had been less scornful of her ‘voodoo’, taken her seriously, could I have saved her? This would be my way of pursuing Isabella’s quest and, in some ways, absolving myself of the guilt that I now felt about not supporting her in the past. Out of nowhere the image of Barry’s clouded eyes appeared like a warning. Determined to jolt myself out of a sense of growing dread I opened the doors and shutters and shouted down to Ibrihim, instructing him to bring me some lunch. Then I picked up Amelia Lynhurst’s thesis.

On the inside page was a portrait of a beautiful woman. The caption read
High Priestess Banafrit
. The patrician nose, long almond eyes and full mouth were profoundly human in their flawed asymmetry. I would have recognised this face on the street. In fact, it almost seemed familiar to me. The more I looked at it, the more I was convinced that I’d seen it before, but where? I read the text below the illustration.

I looked at the illustration below the title. The central figure, a high priestess, sat on a throne and was dressed in a longsleeved ceremonial robe with red and blue ribbons and a tall pillbox-shaped headdress with flowers sprouting out of it. In one hand she held a sistrum - a rattle-like musical instrument associated with the goddess Hathor - and a garland of morning glory, the hallucinogenic bindweed, lay across her lap. A sparrow was perched at her feet next to a small pot. She was surrounded by handmaidens playing tambourines and wearing dark rose mantles over white gowns, similar pillbox headdresses adorned with a single blue lotus flower, and gold bands high around their necks. The caption told me that the image had been found in a tomb in Hierakonpolis on the Nile and was one of the very few depictions of an Isis festival rite. This particular scene had been dated to the reign of Ramses XI in 1000 BC, but the ritual had been carried out through the ages and it was known that Banafrit had performed similar rituals.

I paused, realising where I’d seen the face in the illustration. It was the face of the sphinx that had pinned Isabella to the sea floor. How was that possible? Banafrit and Cleopatra had been three hundred years apart. A shiver ran through me; it was as though the priestess herself was trying to reach out to me through all those aeons. I thought back to my conversation with Barry, straining to remember every detail about the astrarium he’d mentioned. He’d talked about Ramses III, who lived in biblical times - he’d mentioned Moses, hadn’t he? - and then of Nectanebo II, whom Isabella had often spoken about. Ramses. Moses. Nectanebo. And here was Amelia’s Banafrit, High Priestess of the Isis sect, a cult who worshipped her, a legendary magician. And then there was the sphinx found at the underwater site of Cleopatra’s shipwrecked Ra boat. Was it a bizarre coincidence or did it mean something? I couldn’t dismiss an underlying fear that someone or something was directing my research. Isabella’s words about the astrarium guiding me forward rang into my ear and although I had dismissed it, and still did, as impossible, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were too many crossing lines and too many links in the chain for it not to have a significance. I began reading again.

So there was the connection, I thought, although I had no idea what it meant. I leafed through the rest of the pages, most of them about the Isis cult and speculating about Banafrit’s relationship with Nectanebo, the various ways she supported his reign and kept him from harm.

A photograph of a sarcophagus followed, described as Nectanebo II’s empty coffin, now housed in the British Museum.

Idly examining the photograph, I wondered why this paper had been so contentious within the archaeological community. It seemed fairly innocuous to me - the language conversational, the legends and myths telling a believable story. Not perhaps a clearly proven hypothesis but certainly insufficient grounds to ruin Amelia Lynhurst’s entire academic career. The reference to the skybox intrigued me. Isabella must have made a connection between that and her astrarium. I sighed: what was my role in all this? Whatever it was, I needed to listen to my own instincts and work out where the astrarium rightfully belonged. But that had to be soon, and not only for the sake of my own safety. I had to keep it out of the wrong hands.

I noticed the change in the light outside; evening had fallen without me realising. I glanced towards the astrarium, still illuminated by the desk lamp. It threw a shadow now - the unmistakable silhouette of a robed woman, tall and statuesque. Then, terrifyingly slowly, the shadow turned to profile: the full lips and arched nose clearly defined.

Outside, Tinnin the guard dog started barking. Then came the sound of running footsteps. My heart leapt, my whole body tensing as I got ready to defend myself. The footsteps died away and by the time I swung back to the astrarium the shadow had vanished. Had I imagined it?

The next morning I was due at the Brambilla family’s lawyer’s office for the reading of Isabella’s will. Having lost the astrarium once, I’d decided not to let it out of my sight. So I packed it into a rucksack and slung it over my back. And just before I’d left the house I’d taken Gareth’s illustration and hidden it at the back of my bookshelf in a dusty and boring-looking tome on accountancy.

The office of Popnilogolos and Sons was located in the banking district, two buildings down from the Alexandrian Oil Company headquarters. Dreading another encounter with Francesca Brambilla, I pushed open the heavy brass door. Mr Popnilogolos’s secretary showed me into his office.

‘Am I early?’

I glanced around; the heavy oak desk was surrounded by piles of documents stacked against the walls. In the centre sat two ominously empty chairs, like props waiting for actors to breathe life into them. I stepped over a stack of files towards one of the seats.

‘Don’t worry, Madame Brambilla is late as usual. She regards it as her perennial right.’ Mr Popnilogolos, an elegant man in his mid-fifties, his hair oiled back, immaculate in a black suit and blue tie despite the sweat prickling at his forehead, offered me a cigarette which I declined. He pulled out a box file from the top of a heavily stacked cabinet.