The Calling of Destiny
MANY MILES FROM Cairo, Polly North had managed the long trek from Umkaza with the injured Ahman upon her horse, and they were now in a room at the far end of the Bara Mephista tavern. Ahman was laid out flat on a table, with a bundle of blankets serving as a makeshift pillow. He winced as Polly swabbed water over the wound to his shoulder. The mention of Aksak Faroud's name had done as the Scarab leader had claimed, and the Clan Scarabs had agreed to assist Polly with her wounded patient. One of them had arrived and offered Polly use of a large wooden crate of medical supplies. She was begrudgingly thankful, but as she rifled through the crate, she recognised the stamps upon the medicines' labels, and a cold frost of recognition burned into her mind. She had packed the very same first aid equipment for her dig. The Scarabs had obviously stolen it. Although she could not really complain – without the fresh bandages and liniment, fixing Ahman's wound would have been twice as hard.
'It hurts so much,' he groaned, his head twitching from side to side restlessly.
'I'm sorry, but I have to make sure the wound is clean,' Polly apologised. 'Once that Scarab returns to stitch you up, I can bandage your shoulder properly.'
'Thank you…you have been most kind,' said Ahman.
'My pleasure,' said Polly with a comforting smile.
'What bothers me more, is where Destine can be!' Ahman swallowed awkwardly, as if the act caused him great difficulty. 'That devil's blade struck me…and I fell from the cart…but he did not seem to be bothered with me at all. I think they were after her! But who were they? Why did they want her?'
'I'm sorry, Mr Ahman, but when we found you there was no trace of your friend at all,' said Polly. 'I wish there was.'
'So do I, Miss Polly…so do I.'
The door to the backroom swung open, and the moustachioed Bephotsi re-entered. His eyes met neither Polly's nor Ahman's, making it clear that he wished to be out of their company as quickly as possible. He carried a small wooden box, and from it produced a long piece of thread attached to a crooked silver needle.
Ahman caught sight of it and his eyes flared. 'What is that for?'
'What do you think?' Bephotsi grunted. 'It is to stitch you up.'
'With a needle like that? I am not a stuffed cushion!'
'You want me to mend you or not, eh? That is a nasty wound. Unless it gets stitched, it will not heal…you might even lose your arm altogether.'
'My arm?' asked Ahman, licking his lips nervously.
'Look, there's nothing to worry about. I'm sure he has done this lots of times,' Polly said, nudging Bephotsi's elbow. 'Right?'
'Of course!' Bephotsi replied. 'Although…my experience of this nature does begin and end with pigs, it is true.'
'Pigs?' squawked Ahman.
'Calm yourself,' said Bephotsi. 'I know what I am doing…in theory.'
'In theory?' screeched Ahman, right before he promptly fainted.
Ten minutes later, Bephotsi had completed stitching the wound and left the room. Polly wrapped fresh bandages around Ahman's right arm and shoulder. She covered him with a blanket and the man's rotund belly protruded like an erected circus tent. He slept soundly, his body's way of coping with the recent shock, and Polly found herself staring at him. He looked like a kind man, a good man, and at his age he was undeserving of such pain. She began to neatly fold his clothes into a tidy pile, when something caught her eye.
It was an old and beaten leather journal.
Curious, she flipped open the first page and read quietly aloud:
'Journal begun August 1833 – Aloysius Bedford, Archaeologist.' Polly read the words again as if she could not trust her eyes. 'Aloysius Bedford?' Licking her lips, she inspected the book in detail. The cover, the binding, the texture of the pages – everything about it, as if it were just as much an ancient treasure as those she was used to unearthing. 'But…I don't understand this at all. Bedford's name is legendary in the field of archaeology. He wrote most of the texts that I used in my foundation years. But then he disappeared…way back in…when was it, 1833? But that's the year this journal was written! What on earth is this thing? A lost journal by an equally lost archaeologist?'
Polly breathlessly thumbed through the pages of the book. Notes, diagrams and detailed illustrations, all with fine handwriting in the margins, decorated every single page. She recognised
– and corroborated – the information within. To her, it was every bit as priceless as the lost artefacts that it depicted.
'The Anklet of Bast discovered in Umkaza site D, although I cannot take credit for the find – my guide, Vincent, was the lucky soul who unearthed it. Now I can say for certain that Umkaza holds much, much more, and Cho-zen Li's estimations were correct – there is more to be found here, perhaps even the greatest find of my career.'
As Polly mouthed the words, she felt her knees go weak and she flopped down onto the wooden floorboards. As she did so, she failed to see a faded envelope slip from the book and slide underneath the table.
Sat with her legs crossed on the floor, Polly was breathless once more.
'Bedford dug in Umkaza? And Cho-zen Li…sponsored it? Since when? Why didn't Cho-zen mention it to me? Where the hell did this book come from?' She looked over at the slumbering Ahman; a million questions flooded her brain until it was fit to burst.
As she turned the page, she came across something that sent shockwaves through her blood. Staring back at her from the page was a drawing of an ornate child's crib decorated with a variety of gemstones, with detailed pictorial inscriptions of pyramids, winged beasts and a variety of Egyptian deities inscribed at the head and foot.
'The Pharaoh's Cradle!' Polly exclaimed, causing Ahman to stir slightly.
She had seen many artistic impressions of the Pharaoh's Cradle before, but this was different. The ink drawing was far too accurate, far too detailed to be mere conjecture on Bedford's part.
Dotted around the picture were notes on the artefact's dimensions, and to Polly that seemed to prove only one thing.
'Bedford found it!' she gasped. 'He found the Pharaoh's Cradle! But what does this mean? If Aloysius Bedford found it…where is it? Why did he not reveal it to the world? And why didn't Cho-zen tell me anything about any of this?'
The weight of the journal was too much, and it slipped from her shaking fingers onto the floor. It fell open on the last entry, and some unknown force bade Polly to read the text that would end up changing her fortunes for ever.
I must ensure the Pharaoh's Cradle does not fall into the hands of those who wish to do harm. Therefore, I have hidden it, and hidden it well. They say the best hiding place is not right under one's nose; therefore, I have returned the Cradle back to the sand where it belongs, in a fitting monument to my courageous crew who lost their lives. They shall sleep for ever now in the Cradle of their ancestors.
Signed,
Aloysius X. Bedford, 1833.
Polly closed the book and squeezed it as if trying to wring the truth out of its pages. This beaten old journal could be her salvation. No, far more than that…it could be her redemption. She could go back to England with the promise of such richness, such glory! If only she could find the Pharaoh's Cradle. If only she could decipher Bedford's cryptic clue…
'The mass grave!' she cried. 'The one where we found those old bones in Umkaza! Twenty years old? My God…they were part of Bedford's crew! Is that what happened to him? Did he…did he die there? Damn it, the treasure it was under my feet the whole time!'
This revelation quashed any guilt that she might have had. The journal had ensnared her and she was helpless in its grasp. She had to get to Umkaza right away. She could not let this chance slip away. What was she thinking? The book was not her property. It belonged to Ahman. As she stared down at the journal, something washed over her body. It was like a disease trying to overcome her, to infect her, and it was something she had never experienced before in her professional life.
It was greed.
It was pure, selfish greed.