lodged in her hair like confetti.
'Yes,' he said at last. 'There is a vertical groove running up here.'
'Chip the plaster away from the crack around the vulture's head,' she
ordered, and he wiped the blade against his trouser leg and attacked the
wall again.
'It's free,' he said at last. 'It looks as though the head will travel
up the groove. Anyway, I am going to try it, Stand back and give me room
to work.'
He placed the heels of both hands under the head of the vulture, and
heaved upwards against it. Royan bunched her hands into fists and
screwed up her face in sympathy with his effort.
There was a soft grating sound, and the head began to move jerkily up
the exposed groove in the wall. It reached the top of the slot and
Nicholas jumped down from the crate. They both stared expectantly at the
disembodied head, now disfigured by the chipped and damaged plaster.
After a long, breathless wait, Royan whispered dejecr edly, 'Nothing It
hasn't changed anything.'
'The rest of the quotation from the stele,' he reminded her. 'There was
more to it than just the vulture and the sun.'
'You are right.' She looked around the rest of the wall eagerly. ''The
jackal hops and rests Upon his tail.
She pointed with a trembling finger at the small, almost insignificant
figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the graveyards, on the wall
opposite the vulture that they had mutilated. Standing at the foot of
the huge, towering painting of Osiris, he was only a little larger in
size than the ringed and bejewelled big toe of the husband of Isis and
father of Horus.
Royan ran to the wall, and the moment she touched Anubis she felt that
his image too was raised. She flung all her strength against the tiny
figure, trying to twist it first one way and then the other.
''The jackal turns upon his tail',' she panted as she wrestled with him.
'He must turn!'
'Here, let me do that.' Gently Nicholas pulled her away, and knelt
before the black-headed god image. Once again he used the blade of his
clasp knife to chip away the plaster and the thick layer of paint from
around the outline.
'It seems to be carved in some sort of hard wood and then it's been
plastered over,' he told her, as he tested the construction of the
figure with the point of the blade.
When at last he had chipped it clear he tried to twist it in a clockwise
direction, and grunted with the effort.
'No! He gave up at last.
'They had no clock dials in ancient Egypt,' she reminded him agitatedly.
'The other way. Turn it the other way-$
When he tried to turn it counter-clockwise, there was another rasping,
gritty sound from behind the wall panel.
The tiny figure revolved slowly in his hands, until the black head
pointed down towards the yellow tiles.
They both stood well back from the wall, looking expectantly at it, but
after another long wait even Nicholas was disheartened.
