The Curse of the Pharaohs - Elizabeth Peters [121]
“Ja, Herr Professor. Bata told his brother he was going away to a place called the Valley of the Cedar, where he would put his heart in the top of a great cedar tree. Anubis would know his brother was in good health so long as his cup of beer was clear; but when the beer turned cloudy he would know Bata was in danger, and then he must search for Bata’s heart and restore it to him.”
Lady Baskerville could restrain herself no longer. “What is this nonsense?” she exclaimed. “Of all the stupid stories—”
“It is a fairy tale,” I said. “Fairy tales are not sensible, Lady Baskerville. Go on, Karl. Anubis returned to the house and destroyed his faithless wife—”
For once—the first and last time—Karl interrupted me instead of the other way around.
“Ja, Frau Professor. Anubis regretted his injustice to his poor young brother. And the immortal gods, they also felt sorry for Bata. They determined to make a wife for him— the most beautiful woman in the world—to keep him company in his lonely exile. And Bata loved the woman and made her his wife.”
“Pandora,” Mr. O’Connell exclaimed. “I never heard this story, and that’s the truth; but it’s just like the tale of Pandora, that the gods made for… begorrah, but I can never remember the fellow’s name.”
No one enlightened him. I would never have taken the young man for a student of comparative literature; it seemed much more likely that he was trying to emphasize his ignorance of the story.
“The woman was like Pandora,” Karl admitted. “She was a bringer of evil. One day when she was bathing, the River stole a lock of her hair and carried it to the court of pharaoh. The scent of the hair was so wonderfully sweet that pharaoh sent soldiers to find the woman from whose head it had come. With the soldiers went women who carried jewels and beautiful garments and all the things women love; and when the woman saw the fine things she betrayed her husband. She told the soldiers about the heart in the cedar tree; and the soldiers cut down the tree. Bata fell dead, and the faithless woman went to the court of pharaoh.”
“Bedad, but it’s the Cinderella story,” said Mr. O’Connell. “The lock of hair, the glass slipper—”
“You have made your point, Mr. O’Connell,” I said.
Unabashed, O’Connell grinned broadly. “It never hurts to make sure,” he remarked.
“Go on, Karl,” I said.
“One day the older brother Anubis saw that his cup of beer was clouded, and he knew what it meant. He searched, and he found his brother, and he found the heart of his brother in the fallen tree. He put the heart in a cup of beer and Bata drank it and came back to life. But the woman—”
“Well, well,” Emerson said, “that was splendidly told, Karl. Let me synopsize the rest, it is just as long and even more illogical than the first part. Bata eventually avenged himself on his treacherous wife and became pharaoh.”
There was a pause.
“I have never heard anything so nonsensical in my life,” said Lady Baskerville.
“Fairy tales are meant to be nonsensical,” I said. “That is part of their charm.”
II
The general reaction to “The Tale of the Two Brothers” was approximately the same as Lady Baskerville’s. All agreed that Madame’s references to it had been meaningless, the product of a deranged mind. Emerson seemed content to let the subject drop, and it was not until we were almost finished with dinner that he again electrified the company by introducing a controversial topic.
“I intend to spend the night at the tomb,” he announced. “After tomorrow’s revelations I will be able to procure all the workmen and guards I need; until then, there is still some slight risk of robbery.”
Vandergelt dropped his fork. “What the devil do you mean?”
“Language, language,” Emerson said reproachfully. “There are ladies present. Why, you have not forgotten my messenger, have