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Abdullah clapped a hand on Whit’s shoulder. “So you do pay attention when I talk. You’re correct. This is when Cleopatra lost everything—family, rank, her throne, lover, and life.”
“When they lost the fight for Alexandria to Octavian, Marcus’s ward and Caesar’s heir,” Tío Ricardo explained, “Marcus Antonius fell on his sword, and Cleopatra followed days later.”
Abdullah pointed to the wall. “They are both portrayed here, side by side, along with their children: the twins Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios, and then their youngest, Ptolemy Philadelphus. Selene was married off, her twin murdered, and their younger brother was never heard about again, consigned to obscurity.”
“After the battle,” Tío Ricardo said, “Octavian, now named Augustus, forbade anyone in Rome to use the names Marcus and Antonius together. All traces of his accomplishments, any merit or recognition, were scratched from Roman history. He went down as infamous—a traitor.”
“Marcus Antonius is commemorated here, though,” Whit whispered.
There was a note in his voice that made me look at his face. He wore a peculiar expression, one I couldn’t interpret. I stepped closer to the wall,enraptured by the sight of the doomed family. From behind me, Abdullah made a loud noise of astonishment. He’d walked into the adjoining room, the treasury. Whit continued to stare at the wall, transfixed.
“The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones,” he quoted.
“Why is Shakespeare a constant in our conversation?”
He tore his gaze away from Marcus Antonius. It occurred to me then how much Whit might identify with this soldier who had lived and fought and loved two thousand years earlier. A man who had turned against the land of his birth. Erased from his country’s memory and history, his accomplishments willfully forgotten.
I didn’t want to feel any sympathy toward him, but I did. No matter how many times I told myself that he was getting married, that he was loyal to my uncle, that nothing I said to him was safe, Istillfelt the annoying pull of attraction.
I turned away from him and went to join my uncle and Abdullah in the next room. I felt, rather than heard, Whit follow me. A silent presence that somehow managed to soothe and unsettle.
The paradox that was Whitford Hayes.
I expected to find the two men in the same state of awe as before, but instead they both were staring at a painted wall, adorned by hundreds of glittering mosaic tiles in vivid lapis lazuli, rose quartz, and turquoise. It pained me to have to stand so close to Tío Ricardo, when all I wanted to do was to take myself far away from the man who had torn my family apart. His words were a constant refrain in my mind, and I turned them over as if they were a riddle to be solved.
He certainly knew how to play a part.
“Look at this beautiful scene,” Abdullah said, gesturing to the carved reliefs of people carrying bowls filled with fruit. “Picking grapes. And here they are sealing all the jars.”
“Do you think we’ll find them in here?” I asked, surprised. “Two-thousand-year-old grapes?”
“Possibly turned into wine by now,” Whit said, grinning, leaning close to the wall. “Yes, look, here they are recording the vintage.”
“Fascinating,” my uncle breathed. “This tomb looks and feels Greek and Egyptian. There’s even a bilingual quality to the text on the walls.” He followed the line of the wall, musing and muttering under his breath in marveling tones. “Look here, Abdullah, paintings of the death of Osirisandthe abduction of Persephone.”
“Plenty of scarabs, too,” Whit commented, studying the carvings.
“What is their significance?” I asked. “I’ve seen them everywhere. On amulets, walls, pillars, as figurines, and on clothing.”
“They are symbols of rebirth and regeneration and serve to protect those who have gone on to the afterlife,” Tío Ricardo answered. “Beetles are also associated with the Egyptian sun god, who, of course, died and was reborn again every day. He—”
“Ricardo, don’t get distracted. There must be a door here somewhere,” Abdullah said, placing his torch in a cast-iron holder near the treasury’s entrance.
“I agree—why else would they not place any of the treasures against the wall?” Tío Ricardo said.
“They didn’t want to block the way through,” Abdullah replied. “But curious—wouldn’t they want to dissuade tomb robbers?”
“Unless they were caught,” Whit said. “Suppose they came in and were discovered as they attempted to haul everything out. The ancient Egyptians might have reinforced the staircase door, and punished the robbers. Since then, the tomb remained undiscovered. It might not have been easy to sneak onto Philae when it used to be a holy place for centuries afterward.”
“A plausible theory,” Abdullah said.
We all studied the door and the answer came to me in an instant. It might have been the magic swirling under my skin, or the picture of Cleopatra’s children in the foreground of my mind.
“Some of these tiles are stamped with the moon or the sun,” I said.
My uncle and Abdullah said at the same time: “Selene and Helios.”
“Others have Cleopatra’s cartouche. Here’s another for Marcus Antonius,” Whit pointed out. “Curious how Julius Caesar was left out.”
