Touchstone (Meridian Series) (5 page)

The professor smiled to himself,
pleased that he was finally busied with the real work of his time jaunt. The
revelry of the previous night was still shrouding over him like a hangover, but
what was done, was done. He was here and there was nothing else to do but make
the most of things with the time that remained to him. He had dropped off his
formal wear this morning at Madame Tussaud’s on
King Street
, redeemed his deposit, had a spot of breakfast at a street café,
and now he was here—at the
British
Museum
.

Nordhausen’s musings were
interrupted by the arrival of a governess and a small girl, very well dressed
in deep blue velvet and black satin, eleven or twelve years old. The governess
was paging through a guidebook, while the little girl solemnly looked up at the
huge raptor, perching still and tense.

“This is a pagan god of the Egyptians,
dear. It was captured from Boney, and brought to our island.”

“I wonder what it means,” the
girl said, and ran her hands over a column of deeply incised hieroglyphics.”

“No one knows, dear, it is all a
great mystery. It says here that the last people to use hieroglyphics died
almost eighteen hundred years ago.”

Nordhausen was somewhat
surprised by the woman’s remark.  He knew he should keep his mouth tightly
closed, but what harm could come from a little pleasant conversation? “Why, not
at all,” he said. “This is the god Horus in the form of a falcon. See, here is
the name of the pharaoh Rameses, who built this statue.” He pointed to the
royal cartouche, and spelled out, “Ra-me-ses. This circle with the dot is Ra,
the sun god. This funny knot is the symbol ‘mose’, which means ‘to give birth,’
so it stands for ‘M’, and these two hooks are S’s.”

The girl put her fingers on the
hieroglyphics, and slowly traced, “Ra-me-ses.”

“Oh, sir,” interrupted the
governess, “How is it possible that you would know all this? It’s an evil
looking thing, that much I’ll give you. Has an unholy look about it, yes?”

“Unholy? I dare say, Madame.
There is nothing holy about it. In fact, the Egyptians were quite fond of human
sacrifice at one point, and I suppose this monument here has seen its fair
share of blood through the ages.”

“My word! To speak of such
things before an innocent child! Don’t touch, Marie! Come along now.” She
grabbed the girl firmly by the arm, and hurried her out of the gallery, leaving
little more than a frown in her wake.

Well I’ve done it again, thought
Nordhausen as he mentally kicked himself. Suppose they were going to take the
whole tour of the museum and I’ve gone and spoiled it all for them. Suppose the
little girl was to find some glowing inspiration here that sticks in her mind
and feeds the fires of her imagination—and now I’ve gone and put them out. Damn
it man, when will you learn to keep your bloody mouth shut?

Angry at himself again,
Nordhausen decided to go in the other direction. He resolved not to get
involved with anyone else, if at all possible. He would just mind his own
business and be done with this trip. As he sauntered towards the far end of the
hall, he glanced at the cards on some of the displayed items. They were very
curious, even for this curious world he found himself in. Not a single one
identified the item, beyond a general description: Sandstone Goddess; Memorial
stele; Porphyry pharaoh, from
Luxor
.

Nordhausen began to get a
gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. He began to look at every single
item around him. Nothing was dated, nothing was identified. He could read a
number of royal cartouches on various objects, and recognized Rameses, Thuthmose
and one or two vaguely familiar others, on various statues, but none of them
was named on the placards.

Something was very wrong. It was
nearly a hundred years after the discovery of these objects by Napoleon during
his expedition to
Egypt
in 1799. By now several
scholars should have worked out the details of the hieroglyphics: Ackerbad and
Silvestre de Sacy in 1802, and the initial work of Thomas Young on the
deciphering of the Rosetta Stone itself. It was Young who proved that the
proper names in the hieroglyphics section of the stone did, in fact, have
phonetic values, and were not merely symbols, as had been hypothesized earlier.
He then introduced the idea of the proper names being inscribed with ovals
around them, known as cartouches.

 Nordhausen didn’t expect the
testy governess to know such things, but surely the Curator of the museum
should know all this by now. Young’s main contribution to Egyptology was
published in the 1824 Encyclopedia Britannica. The work of the French scholar
Champollion would follow up on this thesis and do much in the way of
explicating the hieroglyphics. But nothing was named here.

He stood in the middle of the
empty hall, surrounded by huge, mute stone gods and kings, dully lit in the
gray afternoon light that streamed in from the high windows. He heard the
rushing of his blood, the loudest sound in this vacant room.

Recrimination vexed him, and the
awful thought that he was somehow responsible for the unexpected change preyed
upon him. But what could he have done to accomplish this? Surely not his
innocent spat with the governess just now. He hadn’t done
anything
…partied
with a bunch of swells last night, but that couldn’t have done this. What was
going on?

Suddenly he became aware of a
great absence. The most famous, the most important Egyptian relic in the world,
was nowhere to be seen. He took a deep breath, made a quick circuit of the
room, and then did it again making certain he missed nothing. He then made his
way, in short, reluctant steps, toward a docent who sat reading in a chair. The
docent, in a navy blue uniform with shiny brass buttons, looked up at the
distraught Nordhausen, and immediately adopted a concerned expression.

“Sir, how can I help you?”

“Where,” his voice broke. “Where
is the Rosetta Stone?” he finally rasped out.

“The Rosetta Stone, sir? I don’t
believe I know that item. Can you be more specific?”  He looked puzzled.

“The Rosetta Stone,” Nordhausen
croaked, “Black basalt panel about so by so,” he gestured, “Same message in
hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek…”

The man gave him an odd look,
noticing his dress and immediately sizing him up as a foreigner. “No, sir,
doesn’t ring a bell for me. Perhaps you were misinformed. We’ve nothing meeting
that description here.”

Nordhausen could feel the blood
draining from his face. “Kindly direct me to the Egyptian Curator,” he said.

“Certainly, sir, though I’m
certain you’ll get much the same answer from him. Just go through this
corridor, up the stairs, and it’s the fourth office on the left. Says ‘Curator
of Egyptian Antiquities’ right on the door.”

Numbly, Nordhausen followed the
directions, and was soon rapping on a heavy oak door, in an oak paneled
hallway.

It was opened by a middle aged
gentleman, with white hair and luxuriant, flowing mutton chop whiskers. His
upper lip and chin were shaven, but huge sideburns erupted from his cheeks.

“Yes, sir, can I help you?”

“I am looking for the Egyptian
Curator?”

“You have found him. I am
Wilbert Wilberforce, himself, at your service. How can I assist you?”   

“I was hoping to find the
Rosetta Stone on display here, can you tell me where it is, sir?” Nordhausen
almost pleaded.

“The Rosetta Stone? Which
Rosetta Stone? There is a whole collection of artifacts that came in from
Rosetta—”

Nordhausen cut in. “Black basalt
slab, about so big, in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek.”

The Curator’s eyes narrowed with
a hint of recognition. “Oh, let me see, I may know what you mean,”  Mr.
Wilberforce mulled. “It is not on display, sir,  it is in storage, downstairs.
May I ask your name, sir, and your interest?”

“Not on display?” Nordhausen was
immediately relieved. The great void in his mind was at least filled with the
certainty that the stone was here, but why would they have it in the warehouse?

“Forgive me,” he said quickly.
“My name is Robert Nordhausen, I have heard of this stone, and have come all the
way from
San
Francisco
, in the
United States
, to make a study of  it.”

“Well, sir, you are in luck. I
am unoccupied today and I would be happy to accommodate you. Let us go see if
we can find this stone of yours. Follow me.”

Nordhausen was delighted. “You
are too kind, sir. I was afraid, for a moment, that something was amiss.”

“Excuse me, sir?” The Curator
gave him a sidelong glance.

“Well it’s just that none of the
displays have any clear identifying labels. I suppose you’ve just not come
round to detailing the history yet, is that it?”

“Detailing the history?” The
Curator scratched his head. “Well, we’ve got what we can out on the main floor,
but there’s simply not enough room for everything else. You’ll see.”

Wilberforce led Nordhausen down
to the end of the corridor, and through a service door which opened into a
plain dark stairwell, lighted by a skylight high above. The upper floors of
museum were illuminated only by natural light.

Wilberforce went on, as they
descended the stairs into the gloom. “I have not looked at this one for years,”
he shrugged. “It is certainly a curiosity. Perhaps I should consider displaying
it. Although, I don’t believe it is as large as you indicated. Ah, here we
are.” He opened the door into a dark room, fumbled about until he found a
match, and lighted a gas lamp on the wall.

Rows of rough shelving were
revealed, running the length of the basement room. They were stacked with
Egyptian artifacts, of all shapes and kinds, from statues, to domestic
articles, to funerary gear, to odd lumps of stone with remains of paint or
carving.

They walked deep into the room,
Wilberforce stopping once to light another lamp. They reached the end of the
storage room, where a number of stone tablets leaned against the wall.

“Oh, my,” said Mr. Wilberforce.
“I should have brought a couple students to assist us.”

“That’s fine,” Nordhausen said,
and walked up to the pile. “If it’s here, I will recognize it.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Wilberforce.
“May I ask how you know about this stone, sir? I am sure nothing much at all
has been published.”

Nordhausen gave the Curator a
dark look, his misgivings churning up again. “Nothing published you say? Why,
what about the work of Champollion, and that of your own Dr. Young before him?”
He manhandled the first tablet out of the way, walking it on its corners with
the help of the Curator.  They did the same with the next, which was quite
heavy, and stopped to catch their breath. The dim gas light cast long shadows.

“I—I—read about it in a French
encyclopedia entry,” Nordhausen continued.

“French?”

“Why certainly. Champollion
wrote about it all in a letter to a Mr. Dacier, revealing what his many years
of research had come to. Why, he worked it all out from this very stone and
published a book in 1824 detailing his work on the alphabet.”

“Forgive me, sir, but I’ve heard
nothing about it.”

Nordhausen shrugged his
shoulders and set to moving the next stone. Little grains of fine sandstone
grated off the panel as he rocked it away and against the first two. Mr. Wilberforce
didn’t seem to care, which was another thing that rankled in the back of
Nordhausen’s mind. These slabs would get prime display in any museum in the
world. The Rosetta stone was perhaps the most famous artifact ever recovered in
Egypt
—yet it was, stored away in the
dingy cellar of the museum like so much trash. His eyes widened when he caught
sight of the next slab.

There it was, hidden behind the
stone he had just moved, dwarfed by the slab behind it. The thick black stone
from Rosetta, but as the Curator had intimated, it was considerably smaller
than it was supposed to be!

He stared at it, unwilling to
believe what he was seeing for a moment. Then strained to push it closer to the
light, almost afraid to set his hands upon it. This was it. There was no
mistaking the characteristic basalt, with the demotic and Greek text laid out
in neat lines etched into the stone. He swallowed hard. Where was the top
third? Where were the hieroglyphics?

The stone was broken entirely
across the top. There were only a few lines of hieroglyphics  remaining, the last
few lines of the text, and those were the very words that were missing from a
chipped area at the bottom of the slab.

Nordhausen stood frozen. What
had he done? It was not possible that he had done this, was it? What did this
mean?

“Good lord,” he breathed. “It’s
broken!”

“Just as it always was,” said
Wilberforce.

“Always was? Are you saying
there was nothing more of the hieroglyphics than this single line at the top?”
Nordhausen looked aghast at the man, who now began to purse his lips with a
hint of indignation.