The Devil Wears Tartan (13 page)

Placing her hands on Marshall was as deeply moving as it would have been to explore the features of her first child, a loving expedition of tender and trembling fingers.

She wanted to feel all of him, trace the angle of his ribs; dart beneath his shirt and feel his flesh; palm the strength of his ankles, the ligature of his calves; cradle the heat of him, feel him hard against her palms.

She stepped back, her cheeks scarlet.

A need pooled between them, each for the other, and if he denied it she’d call him a liar.

“Perhaps I do know a great deal,” she said. How odd that it was difficult to speak; her voice was mired in thickness.

A wiser woman would leave, but the last week had proven that she wasn’t exceptionally wise when it came to Marshall Ross.

H
e should banish her from this place, but instead he turned on his heel and made his way to the hidden stairs. He didn’t turn to see if Davina followed. She had too much curiosity to remain behind.

Climbing the stairs, he made his way to the large room at the end of the building. Once his father’s office had occupied only a corner of the second floor, but Marshall had enlarged it substantially. First to house the more valuable pieces of his father’s collection, and secondly for his own comfort.

He entered, holding the door open for her, and then watched as her eyes scanned the room, widening as they took in all the treasures his father had accumulated. He felt the same upon entering the room after an absence of only a few days. Mounted on the walls were large frames holding necklaces and bracelets, and what looked to be a headpiece crafted of gold. On another wall was a shelf entirely devoted to funereal jars, and as she fingered one or two of them delicately, he felt as if he should warn her.

“Those were once used to hold the internal organs of those who were mummified,” he said.

Her hand jerked back, and she looked at him, startled. She was not, however, horrified as he’d half expected.

“Canopic jars?” she asked.

He nodded. “You know a great deal more about Egypt than most people, Davina.”

“My father had an interest in the subject,” she said. “But then, he had an interest in most countries. He was a geographer.”

“I met him once,” Marshall said to her obvious surprise.

“You never said so. Nor did he ever mention you. I am sure I would have remembered it.”

“It was a very long time ago. I had just returned from Egypt where I had been visiting my father. He and my father maintained a correspondence for some years, I believe.”

“I didn’t know that, either. But then my father was a great letter writer. When he died, my aunt and I could not bear to destroy his letters. We simply packed them away.” She smiled. “It took a dozen trunks.”

She looked around the room. “What is your greatest treasure?”

He didn’t have to force himself to choose. Instead he reached into his lower left drawer and withdrew a small pitcher wrapped in gauze. Of turquoise glass, with a stylized lip and arched handle, it was painted with hieroglyphs expounding the “good god Men-kheperre given life.” The details were as rich today as when it had been made three thousand years ago, one
of seven vessels used to hold sacred oils for a burial ceremony.

Davina came and stood beside the desk as he unwrapped it, and by the expression on her face, he could tell that she was as impressed as he’d been on the first day he’d found it.

“It was the most profound moment of my life,” he admitted, “holding something that old, that fragile, that somehow had managed to survive all those years.”

Carefully, he wrapped the pitcher in gauze and replaced it in his drawer.

She sat at the desk. “Tell me about the first time you went to Egypt,” she said.

“I’ve only been once,” he admitted. “My first impressions were jumbled. I’d not yet seen any part of the world, so even the journey to Egypt was confusing and strange to me.”

“Why did you go?”

“I think my mother thought it would be a good idea if my father and I were left alone to get to know each other. He’d spent the majority of my childhood in Egypt, only returning home once a year or so.”

She propped her head on her hand and regarded him steadily.

“As it was, her instincts were correct,” he continued. “Up until that time I felt a vague dissatisfaction about my father. Once in Egypt I realized I didn’t know him at all. He was, essentially, a stranger.”

“Did you resent him for being gone so much?”

He smiled. “One of the great revelations of that trip to Egypt. I realized that while he’d spent the major
ity of my childhood being gone, I’d spent all that time being angry at him.” Absently he rubbed his fingers across the wood of his writing case. “After that season, whenever I thought of him, I knew exactly what he was doing. While I missed his presence in my life from time to time, I understood.”

“Was he distraught by your mother’s death?”

He glanced at her, surprised at the question. “I think he was. Why do you ask? Because of your own parents? People are different, Davina.”

She smiled. “I know. Forgive my intrusion, I was just curious.”

A moment of silence passed. “Did he go back to Egypt?” she finally asked.

He shook his head. “He died barely a month after she did.” He reached over and placed his hand on top of hers. “Why do you suddenly look so sad? It happened a long time ago, Davina.”

As if determined to lighten the mood, she asked, “What did you do in that season in Egypt?”

“I sifted sand,” he said. “I used a shovel to try to displace thousands of yards of sand. After a few weeks, I was allowed to visit some of his excavations. I actually performed some rubbings—the very same hieroglyphs that I’m now studying. It was days of tedium broken up by moments of profundity.”

She didn’t speak, waiting for him to continue.

“My father was a student of Belzoni,” he said, as if expecting that she’d know the name.

He glanced at her and correctly interpreted her ignorance. “Belzoni led several excavations from 1815
to 1819. He opened one of the Great Pyramids at Giza, and was the first to enter the tomb of Seti I.” He reached behind him to the bookcase and retrieved a large book.

“There are numerous illustrations,” he said, “if you’re truly interested.”

The volume was filled with plates, each backed with cloth, and each magnificently colored.

“I don’t understand you or your father,” she said as she carefully turned each page. “How can you possibly leave a country like Scotland to find another home?”

“It wasn’t to find another home,” he answered. “A Scot will never belong to any country other than Scotland, even if he changes his locale. Scotland’s in your blood. You can belong nowhere else.”

She didn’t look at him. “But if you weren’t looking for a home,” she asked, “what were you looking for?”

“I was too young to be looking for answers when I wasn’t even certain of the questions. As for my father, I think he was in thrall to Egypt.”

He stood and walked to the window, staring out at Aidan’s Needle. “Once I climbed up the cliffs at dawn, and watched as the sun tinted the sand in yellow and orange. I remember being overwhelmed by the beauty of Egypt, by the sheer age of it, by the hint of mystery that permeated the entire country.”

He glanced over at her. “Perhaps that’s what my father felt every day.” He returned to the desk. “At the end of that season, I came back to Scotland with an appreciation for my father’s curiosity.”

“But not for Egypt?”

He smiled. “I loved every moment of it, every dirty, grubbing, boring minute of it. I discovered that I was just like my father in that I had an affinity for the past, almost a soul-deep need to know, to discover. You might say that Egypt began my interest in the world itself.”

“And excavating?”

“I learned that it’s part science and part imagination. You have the sarcophagus of a king and you envision his queen, their children, and the life they lived in a palace just now coming to light. Or the tomb builders themselves; where did they live, how? Were they married or single, did they have wives or sweethearts, children? You hold a pot shard cradled in your hand.” He looked down at his empty, cupped hand as if an imaginary clay piece rested there. “You think: Who used this last? Was it destroyed by the press of earth, or did someone throw it away in a fit of fury? Was it crushed by an animal, left on the fire too long? What was the last meal made in it?”

“And yet you became an expert about the Orient.”

He smiled. “Hardly an expert. I was interested in the culture; my uncle had business interests there.”

“Expert enough that the Crown sent you on numerous diplomatic missions.”

“Perhaps diplomacy was a result of that summer as well. My father and I were strangers. I had to find a way to communicate with him. It was not diplomacy as much as desperation.”

“Did you ever go back to Egypt?” she asked.

“No. There was never time.”

“What happened to you in China?”

He turned his head slowly and regarded her, wondering how much of the truth she could endure. She was stronger than most women he knew, and at the same time, more innocent.

“What do you think of the world, Davina?”

The question surprised her, he could tell.

“You might as well ask me what I think of life, Marshall.”

“Then what do you think of life?”

She frowned at him, but she answered him anyway. “It’s not always fair. Or nice. Or kind. Is that what you want to hear?”

He shook his head. “You’ve never seen the ugliness of it,” he said. “Or the horrors of it. Why should I be the one to expose you to the world, Davina?”

“Because it might be easier if you do,” she said. “It might be kinder if I have someone’s hand to hold. Or if I could turn to someone and have him embrace me after each revelation.”

She stood and took a step toward him, and he didn’t move away.

“What happened to you in China, Marshall?”

He pointedly ignored her, reaching for an object on the shelf beside him. The small statue of a bird had an inscription below it encircled in an elongated oval.

“Do you see this writing?”

“Demotic?”

Once again, she’d managed to surprise him.

“No,” he said, “something a little different. Demotic writing was used in formal texts or treaties. These are
hieroglyphs. More commonly used for the general populace to understand.”

She frowned.

“If you know how to read it,” he said, smiling. “I spend my time deciphering hieroglyphs.”

He sat again, waiting until she joined him.

Ever since he was a child he’d had an affinity for languages, but this one wasn’t spoken. Instead it was carved in relief on every single piece of statuary his father had sent from Egypt. Even the necklaces and bracelets he’d found had been embellished with symbols. The writing of the Egyptians, unlike most of the languages he’d learned in his lifetime, required that he study it in depth. However, his quest to understand gave him something to do each day, a reason to arise from his bed and leave his room, and seek out another world.

Being married to Davina also gave him the same feeling, a thought that he didn’t choose to examine at the moment.

He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a scroll of papyrus he’d been translating. “Every language has conventions, and hieroglyphs are no different.”

He unrolled the scroll with great care and spread it flat on the desk between them, turning it to the side so they could both read.

“English is always read from left to right, for example. In hieroglyphs, it’s not as simple. People and animals always look toward the beginning of the text. See this bird?” He pointed out a stylized figure of what looked like a raven. “He’s looking to the left. That’s
where you begin reading. Most often, however, you’ll find that the figures look to the right, which means you begin from the right side and read to the left.”

“What about these columns?” she asked, tracing the four columns of text.

“The Egyptians liked symmetry. Sometimes you’ll see two columns opposite each other with the exact same text, only with the writing reversed.”

Her eyes were intent on the document before her, her fingers delicately tracing the lettering that had probably been done nearly two thousand years ago. “This form of writing,” he continued, “is almost always written from the top to bottom, so even if there are lines of texts, you’ll read the top sign before the one on the bottom.”

“But not always,” she said, glancing at him.

His smile broadened. “No, not always. But let’s keep that assumption for now.”

He pointed out one sign. “Think of space, first. The amount of unused or wasted space was kept to a minimum. Sometimes you’ll have symbols above and below a sign when it should be before or after it because of that very reason. Also, the order of a sign could be changed simply because of aesthetic reasons. Or even because of honor.”

She didn’t ask the question, but it was there in her eyes.

“The word
god
and the names of the gods and goddesses had to be written before all other signs. The same principle applies to the word for
king
.”

“And you’ve learned all this in a year?”

He shook his head. “Other scholars have discovered these idiosyncrasies in hieroglyphs. I’ve just read about them. And used what they’ve learned, of course, to add to my knowledge.”

She pointed to what looked like a reversed nine. “What is that?”

“That’s a symbol representing the number one hundred. To write five hundred, you would simply draw it five times.”

“What does this say?” she asked, selecting a line of symbols.

“‘He rejoices because of thy utterance.’”

She glanced over at him.

“I think it’s a love poem,” he said, “but I haven’t finished translating it yet.”

He carefully rolled up the scroll. “It’s not all that difficult,” he said. “The signs are often simplified, but you can still detect that they’re individual signs. A cursive form of hieroglyphs was used for some of the tombs of the kings, especially the Eighteenth Dynasty, but this is easy enough to read.”

Her hand stretched out and touched the wax tablet, and he found himself studying her fingers.

How very odd that he’d never been fascinated by the sight of a woman’s hands, but hers were extraordinarily lovely.

She used them well, in an infinitely charming ballet of purpose. Those hands had trailed along his skin in invitation, had brushed back his hair from his forehead. More than once, she’d pressed open palms against his skin, as if trying to find a way to breach
the barriers that stood between them and become part of him.

He stood and returned the bird statue to its place. When he turned, she was there, standing just in front of him.

She placed one hand on his arm. When he flinched she jerked her hand back immediately.