Sphinx (47 page)

I waited frozen until my entire body seemed to have cramped up. Only when I was sure that the light from the torches had disappeared from the tunnel entrance and I could no longer hear the diminishing footsteps did I emerge from the niche. Looking around me, expecting someone’s hand on my shoulder at any moment, I peered down the narrow stone shaft with steps carved into it - I thought it dated from Roman times or perhaps even earlier. I had to try it. I walked softly down ten steps, my hands tracing the roughly hewn walls scarred with chisel marks. A little further down, carved into the rock above my head, was an inscription. Calling on my schoolboy Latin, I translated it:
To descend into darkness is to know oneself
. I shivered.

There was just enough light filtering in from the electric lamps above for me to see the first of the winding steps going further down. Those who had descended before me must have known exactly where they were going - there were no rails, just the slippery walls, clammy under my palm. I touched my hunting knife for assurance before slowly continuing my descent. Despite the cold air, I felt sweat on my forehead. I had never felt more vulnerable, not when diving, not when potholing. The whole tunnel felt as if it were alive, as if its very walls had absorbed centuries of violence, mute witnesses to unmentionable horrors.

About halfway down the light faded away completely and I was plunged into total darkness. It was an unsettling experience; I could see nothing at all, only smell the damp stone and feel it under my groping hands. I paused, fighting off the inevitable claustrophia I felt in such confined locations, then I moved forward tentatively, feeling out every step, expecting to hear the sound of footsteps behind me every second. My breathing sounded unnaturally loud and I forced myself to exhale quietly, the effort making me feel suffocated and panicked. After a couple of minutes I lost all notion of what was external and what was internal. It seemed to me that this profound darkness had become an extension of my body, even my psychology, as if I’d crossed the threshold from physical to metaphysical.

My foot hit the level floor and the thud of the impact seemed to echo like an explosion. I stopped and waited with bated breath. Along the walls I could feel where the limestone fell away to rectangular hollows. My fingers fastened around a long hard object - a stick of some sort, I thought. With a shock, I realised I was holding a bone. I now knew what the hollows were: loculi - horizontal burial shafts, each containing a skeleton. Horrified, I pulled my hands away and relied solely on my feet to guide me.

A breeze coming from deeper inside the catacombs brushed my face. I blinked, my eyes adjusting as they scanned the darkness for light. Nothing, just a seamless, bottomless void that seemed to swallow me whole. Following the direction of the faint wind, I felt my way around a corner. Figures suddenly became visible at the end of a long passage, moving around each other in slow, ritualised movements, as if choreographed. It was like watching some slow underwater dance, terrifying and morbid. I felt my breath rasp in my throat and, in that second, the suffocating claustrophobia was almost unbearable.

Sliding along the wall, I moved closer until I was about fifteen feet away. I realised the figures were inside a chamber; a blazing torch was set up in each corner. There were five of them, all dressed like Pharaonic gods. A huge set of scales stood to the left of the chamber, its ebony and gold arms stretching a good ten feet from side to side. Gold chains held the plates of the scales; one tray was empty, while the other held a single white feather. The pivotal pole was topped with a carving of the goddess of truth, Maat, recognisable by the ostrich feather she wore on her head.

In that moment I understood what was going on. It was the Weighing of the Heart, the same ritual Isabella had dreamed about over and over, the ritual that Amelia had mentioned in her lecture. It was unmistakable. The scale. The raised stone platform. Now I knew why I had been led here by Isabella’s double or maybe her shadow. I was transfixed; it was as if I’d been transported into Isabella’s nightmare, into her very psyche.

An African man wearing a jackal mask kneeled by the scales, his black muscular arms shimmering in the torchlight as he held a gold platter on which sat a shrivelled piece of flesh. Anubis. Beyond the scales lay a pool of dark water. Next to it stood the man in the ibis mask; he held a scroll and a quill. Thoth would transcribe the good deeds and the sins of the deceased, whose heart would be weighed against the weight of a feather. The heart! Horrified, I looked again at the shrivelled object on the gold platter, the dark desiccated flesh visible in the flickering light. Was it a human heart? Isabella’s? I felt my blood roar in my ears and momentarily I thought I might fall. Could it be possible? If so, what was the role of the young girl who had led me here to witness this bizarre re-enactment?

Next to Thoth, in the place where the deceased would usually stand waiting to be judged before the throne of Osiris, were four Canopic jars carved with the heads of the sons of Horus. I felt myself gag slightly, noiselessly. I knew Canopic jars were used to contain the mummified organs of the dead. Did these jars contain Isabella’s organs? Their bright colours and the hieroglyphs painted vertically on each one looked completely authentic. The whole theatrical display seemed meticulous in its historical accuracy; garish, yet sombre with a rigid authority that had kept such a civilisation - with its chaotic underworld - so powerful for centuries. The purpose and effort behind such a fanatically correct presentation was terrifying. And judging by the participants’ concentration they appeared to be convinced by the power of their own symbolism. They weren’t just re-enacting the weighing-of-the-heart ceremony - they were living it.

Osiris’s throne was a gilded chair on a podium, its base carved with serpents and jackals. Behind it stood two figures in profile, Isis and her sister Nephthys, as if they expected the king of the Underworld to manifest any minute. Isis wore an elaborate costume that covered her arms and hands, its long skirt reaching to the ground. Her golden breastplate was moulded in the shape of a woman’s breasts and her face was a painted mask framed by a long black wig. In contrast, her sister goddess was unmasked and near-naked - it was almost as if one goddess was meant to represent artifice, the other nature. Nephthys looked as if she was in her twenties, and I peered closer, wondering if this was the woman who had lured me into the catacombs. But her face did not resemble Isabella’s in any way.

I crept forward along the clammy wall, careful not to make any noise. I’d come too far to go back but I was under no illusion what my reception would be if I were discovered. And aside from my fear, I was also curious. Another figure with a falcon mask, Horus, started a low chant in a language I didn’t recognise. His stance and stature were vaguely familiar to me. Horus’s role was to lead the deceased to the ritual, but as yet the deceased appeared to be absent in the tableau. Had he or she not arrived yet? The other worshippers joined in and the hypnotic monotone echoed off the limestone walls, weaving and blending into one single note that bored its way into my head. I tried to remember the exact order of the gods in the murals I had seen depicting the ritual. Osiris sat on his throne to the right, with Isis and her sister behind him. Here he was missing, the throne empty. Horus and Thoth stood next to the scales that weighed the heart. Horus would read out the sins of the deceased while Thoth would write them down. What did the jackal-headed Anubis do? I thought frantically but I couldn’t remember exactly. And there was another god missing - a figure that always appeared at the bottom of the murals, a large crocodile-type creature snapping at the heart on the scales. Ammut, that was it - Ammut the devourer of the dead, a fusion of all the creatures that terrorised the Ancient Egyptians in real life. She had the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion and the haunches of a hippopotamus. Ammut’s task was to eat the hearts of those found guilty by the gods, thus destroying any hope of an afterlife for them. Would she appear? Although the monster had a peculiarly comical look, it had always disturbed me: there was something primordially terrifying about the sly ferocity of the reptilian jaw, the jagged teeth waiting to tear apart the sinner.

A great rustling burst up around me. My gaze snapped to the stage. The masked figures appeared indifferent to the cacophony, which grew louder and louder until what appeared at first to be a swarm of black cloth rags came streaming from the back of the catacombs. I looked on in horror at the storm of deadly ancient creatures, flapping darkly like emissaries of hell. They swerved at the last minute to avoid the stationary figures on the raised platform and I was buffeted by a huge wind as thousands of tiny beating wings missed me by inches. Bats. They poured past me and continued towards the tunnel’s entrance. I pressed myself against the stone to avoid the flying mass of tiny furry bodies, when I suddenly felt an arm wrap around my neck. I stumbled. Someone pinned my hands behind me and a needle jabbed into my shoulder. I fell back, desperately trying to free myself but my captor hauled me into the full light of the torches and pushed me to my knees. The torches began to spit small meteorites of flame and the masked figures on the podium turned slowly in my direction. They seemed to grow in height as they moved.

Horus stepped forward and his falcon’s head sprouted feathers, its beady black eyes swivelling towards me. I tried to speak but my tongue felt too swollen to move. Belatedly I realised I’d been drugged, but the knowledge didn’t stop the violent rush of fear as the bird-god stepped down from the podium, his huge gnarled claws rattling against the stone floor. This can’t be real, this isn’t real, I told myself over and over, terror reverberating through me like the echo of a nightmare drum.

Horus stretched out his arms as he reached me, revealing a small tattoo on his forearm - the Ba symbol. Struggling to stay focused, I racked my memory for the image - I’d seen it recently . . . Hugh Wollington. Was it him behind the mask? There was so little of the human about the figure now kneeling before me. The falcon cocked its head and opened its beak to speak.

‘We welcome you, Lord Osiris.’

I blacked out. When I came to I was strapped into Osiris’s throne, my legs and torso bound to its sides. Only my arms from the elbow down were free. The god’s tall crown was pressed low on my forehead and his crook and flail were tied across my chest. I was wearing a robe of shimmering fabric threaded with gold. All my senses were heightened by whatever they had injected me with; every movement of the creatures before me carried a multitude of after-images - one sweep of an arm was a thousand arms breaking like a wave, one turn of a god’s head made many, the appearance of the players was undeniably real: the fusion of fur and flesh, scale and skin, seamless and horrifically organic.

Horus and Anubis advanced, Anubis carrying the gold platter with the heart on it, two valves trailing from the rippled purple flesh. Ears twitching, the canine fur and flesh fusing into the muscular neck of a man, Anubis held up the plate. Isabella’s heart, it had to be. Struggling against my bonds, I tried to shout but again I had no voice.

Horus’s falcon head began to speak. ‘Oh Lord, we are gathered here in the hall of truth and justice to judge the life of Isabella Brambilla, to weigh her heart against that of the feather of truth, the symbol of the goddess Maat who will tolerate neither sin nor lie. If the deceased’s heart balances against the feather, she will be granted a place in the Fields of Hetep and Iaru. But if her heart is heavy with the weight of wrongdoing, Ammut will devour it and the deceased’s soul will be condemned to an eternity of oblivion. I seek your blessing, Lord Osiris, as embalmer to the gods and kings.’

Isis stepped in front of the throne. I could see now that the goddess was wearing a painted mask over her features, bejewelled with turquoise eyes and crimson enamel lips that shone fantastically in the flaring torchlight. As she spoke I thought I recognised the voice - Amelia Lynhurst’s, perhaps, only deeper now and resonating with authority.

‘My Lord, you must bless Anubis if you wish to save the soul of your consort.’

The heavy black wig covered her torso, concealing the figure beneath the breastplate, but there was something genderless about her shape - the shoulders too wide, the waist too thick. I struggled to remember Amelia’s figure, whether it had any similarities. Paralysed as I was by the drugs, it took extraordinary concentration to make any coherent sense of the scene and I kept slipping back into hallucination. I tried to speak again, but only managed a groan. Impatient, Isis yanked the flail from where it was tied across my chest and blessed Anubis herself.

Anubis carried the heart over to the scales and ceremoniously placed it onto the tray opposite to that holding the white feather. The scales balanced for an instant, then tipped violently to the side the heart was on.