the sherry, Lord Gower allowed his attention to roam the room. “There is no one here at present,” he declared, although the grand entrance was, in fact, quite full, and more people were entering. “Let us see what we have on offer today.”
They joined the mingling crowd gathered around the presentation tables lining the lobby. There were also easels set up with broadsheet announcements and descriptions of the various items that would be offered during the day’s session.
“As I expected,” observed the earl after a brief perusal. “There is nothing here of interest to us. Still, that is not our chief concern. We are not here to acquire, we are here to learn. It will be instructive.”
And instructive it certainly was… though not perhaps in the way His Lordship intended, much less approved. For in this first visit, as well as those that were to follow over the next months, what Archie learned first and foremost was: the enormous leverage of an aristocratic title. Allied to this, keen student that he was, Archie also gained an appreciation of the immense usefulness of an auction house as a disinterested purveyor of goods.
As he observed the ebb and flow of the auction’s ritual dance, the young man quickly formed the opinion that while it was all well and good to acquire pieces from places like Sotheby’s to sell at a profit to rich clients, it was a slow and inefficient way to amass a fortune. It seemed to Archie that the best position was that of the originator of the sale. The greater profits were realised by the seller, not the middleman buyer. Rather than being a broker for others-for that, in essence, was the role Lord Gower played-a man with taste, good judgement, and a sense of the market, and who also possessed the means and inclination to travel, could easily acquire the same objects in their native countries, so to speak, and sell them directly to private clients, or simply put them onto the market through the auction houses.
Furthermore, if that man also possessed an aristocratic title, then his future was assured. Archie had seen how doors opened to the earl that were barred to lesser mortals, how men deferred to him, how women fawned over him-and all due to his title, which preceded him wherever he went, smoothing his way through the world. If Archie were to own a title, others, both clients and vendors, would trust him for that reason alone.
Little by little, as his understanding of the antique trade increased, his resolve hardened; a vision of his future began to crystallise in his mind. In the meantime, he was content to add to his store of knowledge. A greedy sponge, he would soak up all Lord Gower had to offer. When the day came for him to part company with the earl, Archie knew what he would do and how he would go about doing it.
CHAPTER 23
Are you certain you won’t come with us?” asked Kit. They were standing once again at the end of the sphinx avenue in the early-morning light. Both Thomas and Khefri gazed apprehensively down the long row of statuary towards the temple set in the face of the sheer rock cliff.
“I have made my decision,” replied the doctor somewhat wistfully. “Someone must remain behind to take care of all the treasures we have liberated from Anen’s tomb.” He put a hand on the young Egyptian’s shoulder. “My young friend and I have several years’ worth of work to do, thanks to you. This experience has been most enlightening. I am in your debt.”
“Not a bit of it,” Kit countered. “If anything, it is the other way ’round.”
“You will come back?” asked Kherfri. “When you have found what you are looking for-you will return to Egypt?”
“I will,” promised Kit. “If at all possible, I’ll be back before you know it.”
Wilhelmina fished the brass ley lamp from the pocket of her jumpsuit. A tiny glint of blue winked in the early-morning light. “We should be going,” she said, replacing the odd instrument. Moving to Dr. Young, she extended her hand. When he took it, she pulled him into a hug. “Thank you for everything, Thomas. I knew I could trust you. And Kit’s right-we will return as soon as possible.”
“Rest assured that in your absence I will endeavour to further inquiries into the philosophical implications of ley travel,” said Thomas, gently extricating himself from her embrace. He patted the copy of the Skin Map he had carefully sketched and now wore beneath his shirt next to his own skin. “God willing, I may even be able to translate the cypher.”
“Then we’ll leave you to it,” said Kit.
“On your return, I will happily accompany you wherever your further journeys take you,” added the doctor. “On that you have my word.”
“Until then,” said Kit, clasping his hand.
Mina touched Kit’s arm. “It’s time.”
Wilhelmina and Giles had shown up the previous evening in the midst of the excavators’ celebration at having found the Skin Map. Kit, in an expansive mood, took them down into the tomb and showed them the wall paintings. “See here,” he said, indicating the third panel. “We didn’t have time before, but here is the man himself-Arthur Flinders-Petrie, dressed in a striped robe, open at the chest to reveal the tattoos.”
“Extraordinary,” agreed Wilhelmina. “Probably the first-if not the only-portrait of the man and his map.”
Giles, who had last seen the room as a prisoner locked up with the corpse of his master and condemned to die of thirst, turned his gaze slowly towards the sarcophagus where he and Kit had put the bodies of Sir Henry and Cosimo.
Kit saw the glance and involuntary grimace that followed and recognised the reaction. “I know, Giles,” he said. “It takes a little effort to put it behind you. But it might help to remember that this is not the same tomb where Sir Henry and Cosimo died. That tomb-the one we were in-is in another place and time, in another world.”
Giles nodded, but said nothing.
“Now,” said Kit, moving on to the fourth panel of the giant wall painting, “take a look at this last one. There is High Priest Anen holding the map-the whole thing-as he points to the star.”
“But ours is only a piece,” commented Wilhelmina. “Isn’t that what you said?”
“Possibly a fourth or fifth of the whole-just as Cosimo believed, and which more or less corresponds to the portion I saw in the Christ Church crypt.”
“But you said that was a fake,” Mina pointed out.
“It was,” confirmed Kit, “although someone had gone to the trouble of making it roughly the same size and shape as the original he had stolen.”
“What will you do with the map?” wondered Thomas. “Now that you have found it, what will you do?”
“First,” Kit considered, “we must learn to read it. And then we’ll use it to carry on Cosimo and Sir Henry’s quest to find Flinders-Petrie’s treasure.”
Wilhelmina put her face close to the painting. She held her lamp nearer and studied the map in the high priest’s hand. “Are these in any way accurate, do you think?”
“I wish they were,” said Kit. “They’re just the artist’s representations. I don’t think the people who drew those symbols had any interest in rendering them in exact detail. My guess is they probably never saw the real map at all.” He shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Let me see it,” said Wilhelmina.
Kit turned to Thomas, who produced a bundle wrapped in fresh linen. The doctor untied the cord and unrolled the nearly translucent patch of human parchment. In the gentle lambent glow of the lamps, the indigo symbols etched on the skin seemed to pulsate with strange power.
“May I?” said Wilhelmina. Thomas passed the map to her, and she held it up to the painting. Though the symbols in the painting were crude squiggles next to the real thing, the basic shapes seemed more or less correct. The piece Mina was holding did match up with the upper right quadrant of the map in High Priest Anen’s hand. “Whoever cut up the map was very careful,” she observed. “Look at the ruffled edges.” She pointed out the lower portion and left side of the map. “See how irregular the line is?”
“Whoever did it was at pains not to cut into other symbols,” replied Kit. “So they cut around them, producing this deckled edge.”
