Chapter Five

 

Scarabs, dozens of scarabs.

A whole pile of them on my desk.

All the scarabs in the world.

Being Danilo’s assistant wasn’t quite what I expected. I spent hours doing exactly what he told me I’d be doing—cataloging drawers full, rooms full of artifacts. I actually saw him far less often than I’d hoped. When I did, I was working, or he was. Our only time together was at night, and he often had things to do.

But when we were together it was wonderful. It was love. I kept asking myself if it was only because I had never had a father that I was attracted to an older man. And I’m certain that was part of it. But there was more. Danilo understood me in ways no one else ever had, not even Roland. And he was always gentle with me.

Justin used to tease me about having a daddy. “You only want to collect his insurance money.”

“Danilo,” I told him jokingly, “is never going to die.”

“No, he’ll just get older and older, till he falls apart like the monster at the end of one of those old movies of yours.”

When they finally met, he changed his tune. Danilo and I were at dinner one night. Justin came in with his new boyfriend. When he saw the handsome man I was with, his eyes widened. His boyfriend was a center on the basketball team, Greg Wilton. He was clearly upset that Jus wanted to join us—it was perfectly obvious why.

Danilo was all charm as he invited them to sit at our table. “Justin. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Jamie talks about you all the time.”

“Really?” He seemed surprised.

“He says your housekeeping is even worse than his own.”

Greg had a good laugh. Danilo offered to treat everyone, and the two of them ordered heaps of food. I was a bit embarrassed.

We made small talk till our orders came, the summer, the term, what courses they were taking. Greg didn’t strike me as all that bright. At one point I suggested he should try a remedial reading course. Jocks. Justin shot me a dirty glance.

“So, why,” Justin asked Danilo, “ancient Egypt?”

Danilo smiled and shrugged. “Everything about it has always intrigued me. Fantastic civilization. I think they knew how to live.”

Greg chimed in. “Isn’t it all, you know, really gloomy?”

“These people used to sing greetings to the sun every morning. They painted all their buildings in the most vibrant colors.”

“I only think of mummies and shit.” Greg wasn’t exactly making a good impression. “I mean, you know, they’re all dead now. Like, who cares?”

Danilo put on his most engaging smile. “Ancient Egyptian civilization flourished, unchanged in its essentials, for more than 3,000 years. And here we are, two millennia after its decline, still discussing it. Do you think that will be true of America?”

Greg didn’t like the sound of this; I could tell he was having trouble digesting it. I decided to get between them. “So, are things are getting serious between you two?” They had been dating for nearly a month.

Greg looked around, mildly alarmed. “Not so loud.”

“We don’t want people to know.” Justin mirrored him. “You know how people talk.”

“Having dinner like this is good.” Greg had not stopped looking over his shoulder. “I mean, you know, the four of us. This way nobody’ll know.”

Finally, Danilo spoke up. “‘Know’?” he asked coyly. “Know what?”

“You know.” Greg looked around still again. “About us.”

“What about you?”

“About us being—” Suddenly he caught himself. It had finally dawned on him that Danilo was playing with him. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I suppose I do.”

“The guys on the team wouldn’t…” He smiled weakly.

“So, it is their fault you’re ashamed of yourself?”

I quickly steered the talk into more neutral ground.

That night Justin was home alone. “Where’s Greg?”

“Not here. Your boyfriend freaked him.” He made a sour face. “Talking like that.”

This surprised me. Coming from Greg, it seemed natural. I had never imagined Justin might be quite so… circumspect. “What do you mean? Talking like what?”

“Jamie, Greg and I both have scholarships. So do you. You know what the administration’s like. If we want to go into the pros, we have to—”

“Why?”

“Because… because… I don’t know. That’s just the way it is.”

“You told me once you wished the world could know about you and Grant.”

“Grant’s dead. We made sure nobody ever knew. Not for certain.”

“Even so, that’s what you said.”

“Things change. Grant would have agreed with Greg, and so do I.”

That was that. He went to his room and stayed there for a while.

When he came out, he was in a brighter mood. He told me, “You said Danilo was older. I was expecting a guy in his sixties with a limp and a cane.”

I shrugged. “I told you how good-looking he is.”

“He can’t be more than 30. Jamie, he’s gorgeous.”

“It was pretty clear you thought so.”

“Was it?”

“Even Greg picked up on it, if you can imagine.”

“Greg’s not dumb.”

“Oh, like, I mean, you know, for sure.”

“Bitch.”

I actually didn’t know how old Danilo was. It never seemed important enough to ask. There were times when he seemed to be in his forties or fifties; other times he seemed hardly ten years older than me. Tricks of the light. Anyway, Justin acted more than a little bit jealous, which pleased me. He pouted and pretended to read a magazine. Then finally he asked me point-blank, “Are you in love with him, Jamie?”

I didn’t want to say yes. Love seemed so corny to me. “Are you in love with Greg?”

“Greg’s my age.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Well, what I really want to ask is, is he in love with you?”

“He hasn’t said so, not in words. But I’ve never said so to him, either.”

“Aha.”

I was starting to feel irritable. “There has to be a downside, doesn’t there? He talks to me like I’m an important part of his life, Jus. He talks about what we’ll do in the future. And about all the things he’ll show me. I want that.”

“All Greg talks about is hoops.”

I couldn’t resist. “He’s your age.”

 

* * *

 

The summer term was a short one; class sessions lasted three hours instead of the usual one. Finals were coming; papers were due. I had been Danilo’s assistant for nearly a month, and I was learning. And everything about ancient Egypt had begun to fascinate me, as it did him. The style, the way they expressed themselves, it all felt… I don’t know… right, in some way.

So even though my job was drudgery, I enjoyed it because I was learning. There had been papyri to organize, fragile things I had to handle very carefully; amulets to categorize; and now these scarabs. I had to sort them, measure them, classify them according to what they were made of, limestone, faience, lapis lazuli… And I had to make sketches of what was inscribed on them. It dawned on me, working on them, that a month before I had never even heard of faience and lapis lazuli. The thought pleased me.

Sketching wasn’t easy for me. I had never had any artistic training. The first few times, Danilo stood over me, helping me get the hang of it. Most of the hieroglyphs and symbols could be made with a few simple pen strokes. At one point I was having trouble getting one right, the figure of an owl. Danilo put his hand on top of mine and guided it. As always when we touched it felt wonderful. I took hold of his t-shirt and pulled him toward me and kissed him.

“Danilo, I—”

He kissed back, hard, deep. “Jamie, do you know what I’m giving you?”

“Yourself, I hope.” He meant something else, something more. He always did in our intimate moments. I only half guessed what he might mean. We lay across the tiny desk in my office and kissed and held each other. When I stood up there were scarabs stuck to my cheek and arm. We both laughed and he brushed them off.

As passionate as we had been, we had never made love, not real love. I was beginning to wonder if… I put it down to his position, and mine. If there was a scandal we could always say, quite truthfully, that we had never… But I wanted him so much.

 

* * *

 

There had been some talk among the other students in my class when Danilo announced he had hired me. A few of the girls in particular shot me unpleasant glances; one of the guys looked like he wanted to spit on me. But that passed.

I had spent a lot of time in the museum library working on my research paper. Naturally I chose to write about the Set cult, what I could learn about it. There was plenty of material about the god but nothing explicit about the secret cult Danilo had mentioned, at least nothing in the open stacks. But what I found tantalized me.

Set was the brother of the great god Osiris, the greatest of the Egyptian deities. Horus, the son of Osiris and the divine embodiment of the king, was his nephew. And Set and Horus made love.

There was a long mystical text called “The Contendings of Horus and Set.” At one point in it… yes, uncle and nephew became lovers, but only briefly. It seemed to be more a matter of them trying to get one-up on each other than anything else. Typical relationship. Set was the seducer.

I asked Danilo about it. “You would find that text.”

“Yes,” I was pleased with myself, “I would.”

“Have you also learned about the ‘negative confession’?”

I hadn’t come across that. “No, what was it?”

“When an Egyptian died his heart was taken out and weighed in a balance, to see if he was fit to enter heaven. Part of the ritual was a long list of sins he had to assert he had never committed.”

I knew what he was going to say.

“And one of those sins was same-sex love.”

It didn’t seem to make sense. “But Danilo, the gods made love. Set made love to his nephew.”

“Yes.” He shrugged. “Egyptian religion was hardly the last to be caught in that contradiction.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Like all religions, the Egyptian belief system was a crazy-quilt of ideas and attitudes that accumulated over centuries. How could there not be contradictions?”

I found myself wondering how seriously he himself took the old gods. When he talked about Set, he always sounded… But before I could think of a way to ask, he shifted tone.

“I’ve been ignoring you, Jamie.”

“No.”

“Well, not spending as much time as I’d like. It’s been a busy summer. For both of us.”

“I don’t mind.” I minded.

“When the term is over, let’s go away somewhere. Be together, just you and I.”

I was completely surprised. “Where?”

“Does it make any difference?”

“Not if we’re together, Danilo.”

“Let me think about it, then.”

“I thought that was a definite invitation.”

“Let me think about where, I mean, not if.”

I kissed him. “Someplace romantic.”

“We won’t be staying in Pittsburgh, then.”

 

* * *

 

Roland seemed quite pleased that I was warming to twentieth century music; he didn’t make it a secret it was his favorite. A lot of it was beyond me, though. Some of it for technical reasons—it was simply too difficult for someone at my level. I tried Stravinsky’s piano version of Petrouchka and made a complete mess of it. It would be ages before I was that good.

Other pieces I tried—like the second Shostakovich sonata—were simply beyond my understanding. On the surface the music was fairly simple. But there was something there, between the notes, that I couldn’t hear. I played recordings of it and listened as carefully as I could, and the music was filled with passion. When I played it myself it was so flat…

“You need to keep working on it,” Roland told me. “It’s not a young man’s music, but you’re beginning to find its heart.”

I had no idea what he meant, and I said so. “I feel like I’ll never play it properly.”

“Do you know much about Shostakovich?”

I told him I didn’t. I should have; I should have learned what I could.

“He was the quintessential outsider, Jamie. Isolated, lonely, never knowing who he could trust.”

“I’m not sure I want to understand that.”

“You will anyway. Sooner or later, we all do.”

I wanted to ask him who exactly he meant by “we.” Before I could, he changed gears. “Why don’t we work on the Poulenc for a while?”

A week before finals Danilo took me to dinner, an expensive place. I was moving up in his esteem, it seemed. Even though I was underage he ordered a bottle of wine for us. I resisted making any jokes about him trying to get me drunk. He didn’t have to.

The place was dimly lit. I thought I saw touches of grey at his temples. We mostly made small talk. Halfway through dinner he reached across the table and took my hand.

It made me a bit nervous. I found myself thinking about Justin, Tim, my scholarships. But it felt so warm.

“I’ve never invited you to my house, Jamie.”

He hadn’t. It didn’t bother me. I had always put it down to how busy we both were. “That’s okay.”

He took my hand and kissed it. “Tonight. It’s high time.”

I had never had anyone do that before. It felt… it felt as exhilarating as all Danilo’s kisses felt. For just the briefest instant I was self-conscious about it. Then I didn’t care.

It was after dark when we left the restaurant. He took me home. His house was a large Victorian one with vibrant stained-glass windows. I told him how beautiful I found them.

“I left the lights on so they’d be shining for you when we got here.”

On closer inspection the windows had Egyptian motifs. One had a shimmering scarab at its center; another was adorned with lotuses. “Did you have these made?”

“No, the house came like this, believe it or not. The Victorians went through a period of Egyptomania. How could I not take this place?”

Inside there was incense burning. I had never much liked incense, but this smelled, I don’t know, pungent, almost bitter. It took a moment to get used to the aroma, but then it was fine. The rooms were fairly dark; there was only accent lighting, in one room a Tiffany lamp with more lotuses.

I had expected his place to be filled with Egyptian things, papyri, statuettes. Instead there were beautiful antiques, heavy wooden tables, overstuffed Victorian furniture, shelves of old books. There was a first edition of Byron’s Manfred. It must have been worth a fortune. “Where are the scrolls and amulets?”

“At the campus museum, where they belong.”

On the walls were framed portraits of men from different ages, in different styles. I recognized some as medieval, some as Renaissance, some as more modern than that. Some of them wore crowns. The modern ones were photographs, some signed. Some of them were labeled or were familiar enough for me to know who they were; most weren’t.

“Kings, Jamie, all of them. Richard Lionheart, James I—”

“The king who did that Bible?”

“Exactly. And Alexander. David and Jonathan. And Frederick the Great, Julius Caesar and his nephew Augustus, Hadrian and Antinous, Henri III, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan… ” There were dozens of them. He told me about the lives and achievements of some of them. It became clear that they were all men who had loved men.

And there were some women too. Queen Christina of Sweden, Queen Anne of England, and a few more that were not labeled. Christina I knew from the Garbo film.

Another corner held portraits of men who seemed to be popes, or at any rate were dressed that way. One was labeled “Julius II.” Another was of a pope with his arms around a beautiful young boy; the label read, “Julio III et Innocenzo.”

He began telling me about the ones I didn’t recognize and weren’t labeled. The Holy Roman Emperor Boris II. Chinese Emperors Ai, Qianglong, Xianfeng. William Rufus, the second king of England. Go-Shirakawa, Emperor of Japan, and the Shoguns Yoshimochi, Yoshimitsu, Ieyasu… There were scores of them, hundreds of them, and I found it more than a bit overwhelming.

On one wall, prominently lit with a spotlight, was an image of the Kissing Kings.

In other rooms there were portraits of artists. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Erasmus, Feng Wenglong, Melville, Saikau, Handel… And philosophers, Wittgentstin, Erasmus… There were signed photographs of Poulenc and Eisenstein, and others I didn’t recognize and whose handwriting I couldn’t read.

Among them I instantly recognized Chopin. In one corner there was a grand piano. I opened the keyboard and played a few notes; the tone was richer than any I’d ever heard. Above the keys was the logo: Bechstein. The best, the cream.

“I can have it tuned for you, if you like, Jamie.”

It was a shrine. The whole house was a shrine. It struck me as excessive, in a way; in another way… most decidedly not. I knew Danilo was more open about himself than most of the people in my circles, and I knew he loved the past, but all this…

I felt light-headed, almost as if I was underwater. I had no idea why.

He touched my cheek. “I am the keeper of their flame. The last one left.”

I had no idea what to make of all this. For the first time in Danilo’s presence I was genuinely… not uncomfortable, exactly, but a bit bewildered…

“We have always been kings, Jamie. We have wielded power. We have made the art that shaped whole ages.”

I stepped away from him. “Where are the athletes? Where are the scientists and the auto mechanics and the trash collectors?”

“You tell me where they are. Would your friend Justin want his portrait here, among the others?”

“N-n-no.”

“And would his friend Greg?”

“No. You know he wouldn’t.”

He kept silent so I could realize what he was trying to tell me. I wasn’t quite sure I did.

“We have the blood of kings in our veins, Jamie, you and I. We are part of their line. We are one with them, in a way Justin and Greg and their like will never be.”

“No, Danilo, this can’t be right.”

“Close your eyes and feel it…” he whispered. “It is right.”

I looked around the room. The kings and presidents, the artists and composers all seemed to want something from me. And some of them were moving. Yes, they were moving.

I realized that the incense must be masking something else, some drug. Unlikely as it sounds, I had never been high before. It didn’t matter. All I wanted was Danilo.

He put his arms around me and kissed me, and I knew that we were, finally, going to make love. His bedroom had more portraits on the walls, but I hardly noticed them. He let me undress him, firm, smooth body. There was hair on his chest and legs, not much, just enough to define the muscles and make him even sexier. I kissed every part of him. Tenderly he undid my shirt, my shorts, my sneakers.

Nothing I had ever experienced prepared me for the intensity of what I felt that night. Wave after wave of sex, engulfing me, making everything else in the world melt away.

“Danilo.” I spoke softly. “Do you love me?”

He kissed me again, harder and deeper than before. “Jamie, I love you.”

And I told him I loved him too.

The words had been said.

I knew there was no turning back.

What he was trying to teach me, I wanted to learn.

 

* * *

 

In class we learned about the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. He had dismissed all the priests of the traditional gods and instituted a new religion, the worship of the god he considered the one, true One. He even moved the capital to a new place called Amarna, to diminish the priests’ influence even more. It caused an upheaval in Egypt, 20 years of chaos and unrest.

“The more romantic historians like to believe he worshipped the Judeo-Christian God,” he told us. “But Akhenaten was more original than that and more subversive. Here is an image of him, with his son and successor.”

He showed it to us. It was the Kissing Kings.

There were giggles around the room. One of the girls, Jane, spoke up. “So, he was a fag?”

“If you want to be picturesque about it. He was also married to one of the most beautiful women in history, Nefertiti.”

“Then why was he gettin’ it on with his kid?”

Danilo smiled a faint smile. “We all have to be true to our natures.”

“Not fags.” She was becoming more and more upset by what she’d learned.

But Danilo had had enough of her. “To deny your nature is to commit a kind of suicide. To deny your nature is voluntary death. Are there any other questions?”

No one seemed to want to know more about the pharaoh’s personal religion. But I had understood what Danilo was telling me, alone among the students: the “heretic pharaoh” was the key to understanding the Set cult.

 

* * *

 

A few afternoons later I was working in my little office, sorting through some scrolls. Professor Feld knocked on my door. “Have you seen Semenkaru?”

“Danilo? No, not for a couple of hours.”

“He’s never here when I need him.”

Lucky Danilo, I thought. Feld had never quite stopped being suspicious of me. He obviously regarded me as a potential thief, and maybe not so potential. I decided to bait him. “Do you know anything about the black market for antiquities?”

“No. Why?”

“I’m just curious, that’s all. I mean, I wouldn’t know where to begin to sell a hot mummy, but people do. It’s hard not to wonder.”

“If I were you, I’d be careful, young man.” He left, slamming the door loudly behind him.

The Antiquities Department only had four professors, Danilo, Feld, a Greek specialist and a specialist in Persia and Babylon. There was no chairman; they operated independently and made decisions democratically. It gave Danilo a lot of autonomy. But as much as Feld disliked me, he couldn’t do much about the fact that I worked in his department. Even so, I knew toying with him wasn’t the smartest idea. But I could never resist.

One of the scrolls I was working on puzzled me. It was in a style I hadn’t seen before. I knew that besides formal hieroglyphics the Egyptians had had a less arty, less ornate writing called hieratic. This scroll wasn’t like that. I’d have to ask Danilo what to do with it. He said he’d be down in the catacombs.

This time I was able to step over the cordon without fear of being stopped by anyone.

The basement was filled with Greek and Roman objects. The first sub-basement held a group of smaller things from those societies and several rooms of Babylonian relics. The second was where the Egyptian collection began. It was by far the largest collection and extended two levels further down. Danilo told me the university had been caught up in that same Victorian Egyptomania and had amassed a considerable collection, back when.

I switched on the light and descended. On the first level I heard voices and paused. It was unlikely Danilo would be there, but… After a moment I was able to make out what I was hearing. It was Feld, talking to himself. In Latin.

I continued downward and reached the second sub-basement, the place where Danilo had shown me those mummies way back when. It seemed a thousand years ago. I had been down there a few more times, mostly just looking for Danilo, but once or twice I had had to work there, sorting through stacks of papyri, recording the inscriptions on mummy cases. That kind of thing. So it wasn’t exactly familiar, but it wasn’t as unsettling as it had been that first time.

I paused at the landing. The electric lights, as always, didn’t provide much illumination. But at least I was used to the dim place by now. I stood and listened. Everything was perfectly silent. The doors to the various rooms were all closed.

After a moment I decided to call out. “Danilo?”

My voice echoed down the corridor.

A bit louder. “Danilo?”

He wasn’t there, it seemed. I took a few steps down the passageway and knocked lightly on the doors, knowing it was useless.

And it was. There was no one.

I headed back to the stairs. No use lingering down there when there was work to be done. I switched off the lights in the corridor and put my foot on the first step.

There were voices.

It took me a moment to realize where they were coming from: below.

I called down the steps. “Danilo?”

There were whispers, just at the limit of my hearing, so faint I wasn’t even quite certain I was hearing them. Not at all sure it was the right thing to do, I took a few steps down. “Danilo?”

The voices went silent. Then in a moment they began again. I shouted his name still again, and again they became quiet.

I had to see. Danilo had always been so emphatic that I wasn’t to go below the second sub-level. But there was someone there. If it was him, he’d be angry, but I had seen his anger before and I knew he wouldn’t stay that way very long, not with me. And if it was someone else, someone who shouldn’t be there… I had to see.

Carefully I descended, a few steps, pause, a few more, pause. Listening. Voices. I knew better than to call his name. There would be no answer. Among the murmurs I thought I heard my own name.

The lights strung along the stairs were farther apart the lower I went. Still I continued.

Sub-level Three. I found the switch for the lights along the corridor there; they were so dim and so far apart that they gave practically no light at all. Something made me keep my voice low. “Danilo?”

Nothing. The voices were from lower down still.

I hesitated. I had never been so far down into the catacombs before. It was a bit frightening. I remembered how on edge I had been that first time. But I was being foolish. What could happen? Even if there were rats or a garter snake, they’d be more afraid of me than I would be of them.

Down I walked, slowly, gingerly, as quietly as I could manage. The voices whispered, murmured, seemed to call me. At the fourth, final sub-level there was another light switch. It was lower on the wall than the others and I had to grope to find it. A row of dim lamps came on along the corridor, faint lights, 20 feet or more apart.

“Danilo?” My voice was a whisper.

My presence seemed to disturb whoever was there. Everything became still. I took a few steps along the corridor. Finding my resolve, I raised my voice again. “Who’s there?”

Nothing. I began to walk. Slowly, cautiously.

Doorways opened to my left and right as I moved along. There were no doors on them; they gaped, empty. The rooms were black as midnight. Anyone could have been hiding in them. Or anything.

The corridor made a turn. I looked back the way I had come. I was quite alone in that gloom, and I was beginning to find it oppressive. I should go back.

From ahead of me came a whisper. The words were almost inaudible. It seemed to me they whispered, “Come to us.”

“Who’s there?”

Another whisper, quite incomprehensible.

“I said who’s there?”

The corridor widened out into what I took to be a large storage area. The walls opened out, the floor became rough, or at least uneven under my feet. The lights were hardly any help in that huge black space, just faint glows along the bottom of the wall, far apart. But there was enough light for me to see that the room was empty except for some stacks of things in the corners and along the walls.

Empty. There was no point staying there any longer. I turned to go back.

There was a soft click. The lights went out.

Everything was pitch black. Not the least glint of illumination.

I froze. Involuntarily I dropped the scroll I had been carrying. The wiring was old, maybe as old as the building. There must be a loose connection. Maybe they would flicker back on. The blackness was absolute.

Stay calm, Jamie, don’t panic. You know where you are, you know where you came from. You can feel your way back along the corridor till you reach the stairs.

I inched carefully toward the wall; I reached out and touched it. Rough stone, cool, solid and reassuring. Slowly I reoriented myself in the darkness and began to move back the way I had come.

Something touched me. Something tugged at my shoelace.

A rat. It must be a rat. I kicked. There was nothing, my foot didn’t make contact with anything. I kept moving.

Something grasped my shirt and pulled at it. I cried out and pulled free. Doing it, I spun around and away from the wall. Suddenly I had no idea which direction to move in.

A hand touched my leg, ran along my thigh. I swiped at it with my fist and missed.

A whisper. A voice out of the blackness. “Jamie. You are ours now.”

I found the wall and began moving along it again, hoping I had chosen the right one, and the right direction. The thought that I might be heading deeper into that room almost paralyzed me with fright.

There were more hands, running all over my body. Touching my face, my chest, my legs. One of them groped my genitals.

Voices all around me whispered.

“Jamie, be with us.”

“Jamie, so lean, so beautiful.”

“We will have you, Jamie.”

I fought but there were too many of them. They pinned me against the wall. I felt lips touch my cheek. A tongue ran along the side of my throat. I swung my fist. And struck only empty air.

“You are ours, now, Jamie.”

A hand stroked my backside, another caressed my crotch. Unseen faces kissed me, licked me, caressed my cheek. I felt a tongue force its way into my mouth.

Finally, I found the resolve to scream. “Danilo!”

For a moment they all backed away from me.

“Danilo!”

The unseen whispering things laughed softly. “Danilo cannot help you, Jamie. You are ours.”

Hands pushed me against the wall again; others worked at my belt, undid the button on my shorts. I pulled free of them and ran along the black corridor. And tripped, fell.

They were on top of me, groping, fondling, touching, caressing, kissing. Despite my fear I felt myself becoming aroused. The realization sickened me.

“Danilo! Please, Danilo, for the love of god help me!”

I felt my t-shirt being torn off.

And then, abruptly, the lights come on. Dim lights, but enough to dazzle my eyes. When they adjusted I saw the corridor, quite empty. My t-shirt lay on the floor not far from me, torn to ribbons.

Someone was coming down the stairs.

“Danilo?”

It was Feld. He walked briskly down the corridor to where I was still sitting on the floor. “What exactly is the problem, Mr. Dunn?”

“There was someone here. In the dark.”

He smirked. “Of course. Get up.”

Slowly I got to my feet and picked up what was left of my shirt. “Professor Feld, I’m telling you there’s someone else down here.”

“Nonsense. The light went out and you panicked. Are you on something?”

“No.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” He was so smug I could have hit him. “I’ll have to tell Semenkaru about this.”

“So will I.”

“I warned him it was a mistake to take you on.” He turned his back and headed back the way he had come.

Alone, I realized how badly shaken I was. To have been raped, or almost raped by… by… I couldn’t think about it. But I was trembling. I could hear voices again, snickering faintly at me. “Poor Jamie,” I thought I heard one say.

I left as quickly as I could, headed back up the stairs without bothering to turn out the lights again. Somehow that would have been… I don’t know, inviting them to follow me, or something.

At the second sub-level I heard Feld and Danilo talking, quite heatedly. I went back down a few steps and listened, hoping it would pass quickly. And it did. Feld shouted something and stomped up the stairs above me.

I stepped up into the corridor. “Danilo?”

From one of the rooms his voice came. “Yes, Jamie, I’m here.”

I went to him. He was standing beside an alabaster sarcophagus, obviously waiting for me. He was not smiling. But he put his arms around me and held me.

“Are you all right?”

“I… I don’t know. I think so.” I was still shaking.

“I warned you not to go down there.”

“Yes.” I felt an inch tall. “But I thought it was because there were valuable things there.”

“There are.” He looked me up and down. “Jamie, you’re crying.”

I hadn’t realized, but I was. He stroked my hair. “Here. Let me.” He took the tatters of the shirt out of my hand and dabbed my eyes with it. Then he kissed me on the cheek. “You mustn’t again. Do you understand?”

“What’s down there? What?”

“You’ll understand in time.” He put his arms around me.

“Danilo, I was almost…”

“I know. They could have done worse than that. Promise me you won’t go there again till you’re ready. Next time no one may hear your cries.”

I leaned against him. It felt so good to have him hold me. And yet… ”Danilo, I want to know what is down there.”

He touched his lips to the side of my face. “In time.”

“Now. I want to know.”

“No.” His voice was as firm as I had ever heard it.

I let him hold me more closely. “Tell me I don’t have to be afraid. Tell me I won’t have dreams about this.”

“Jamie, I wish I could.” He held me so tight. “Come home with me tonight. I’ll fix dinner, and we’ll talk.”

“I think I need to be alone.”

“No, you’ll feel better if you talk it out. And, Jamie, I’m the only one who’ll understand. You know that.”

I stepped away from him. “I’m not sure what I know.”

“Come upstairs. We can talk better in the light.”

We went up to the museum. The large gallery was empty. Late afternoon sun fell on the statue of Horus. I loved Danilo so much, and now I was so afraid.

“There are mysteries, Jamie. Deep ones. You’ll understand in time. In time you’ll have—” He seemed to think better about what he was going to say. The stone god looked down on us.

Finally, I broke down completely. “When I was a boy, Millie’s husband used to fly into drunken rages and beat everyone in the house.”

“You?”

I nodded. “It was terrifying. I never thought I’d know anything worse. But today, down there—”

“This is different. That, you couldn’t control.”

It was such an unexpected thing for him to say.

“Danilo, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know what’s happening between us. I’m so scared.”

“As I told you, you have the blood of kings. In time you’ll learn to use it, and all the power it carries.”

I kissed him. I wasn’t sure why, except that I needed human contact.

“Come home with me tonight.”

 

* * *

 

His house seemed less strange to me. All the portraits and photographs… after the horrible day they seemed, I don’t know, reassuring.

Danilo made me comfortable in the parlor, on the sofa, and went off to the kitchen to make dinner. I fell asleep almost at once. And dreamed.

I was in a vast, dark, empty place, the kind that seemed to exist only in dreams. Everything was silent. I lay on an ornate divan. From out of the night came a man, short, thin, with huge whiskers. It was Frederic Chopin. He bent and kissed me.

And I awoke. I had been asleep long enough for Danilo to have cooked an elaborate meal and set the table. When he saw I was awake he smiled and said, “Perfect timing.”

There wasn’t much talk over dinner, and what little there was, was about everything but the museum and Egypt. He asked about Justin and Greg.

“They’re the same, I guess. Greg really doesn’t like me.”

“Is that a loss?”

I laughed. “No, I guess not.”

After dinner I helped with the dishes, as I had always done at… not “home,” but at Millie’s.

We settled in the parlor and cuddled for a time. The talk turned to music. Danilo asked me to play for him.

I moved to the Bechstein, adjusted the seat, tried a few notes. It needed tuning but it wasn’t too bad. I played the opening bars of the Schubert in C Minor allegretto. Danilo stood behind me, rubbing my shoulders as I played—not helpful but it felt wonderful. Then I played a few of Chopin’s nocturnes. He sat beside me and listened attentively.

When I was finished, he told me, “Chopin never played them more feelingly himself.”

I laughed. I had to be a joke. “How could you know that?”

He avoided the question. “I have something for you.”

“Really?” I’ve always loved getting presents.

“Wait here.”

While he was gone, I played a few more pieces of Schubert. Lovely tunes, easy to get lost in. The day’s tension was finally beginning to dissipate.

Then he came back, carrying a sheaf of large old scrolls. At first glance I thought they must be papyri. But they didn’t quite look like any I had seen. He handed them to me, and I unrolled them.

It was sheet music, but ancient. I had never seen notation like it before. It seemed to be a collection of songs; there were lyrics written under the notes. It must be centuries old; the ink had faded badly.

“Love songs.” Danilo said it with quiet confidence. “I was going to give you this for Christmas, but today seems right.”

“Christmas isn’t for five months. Thank you.” I kissed him.

“Can you make out the script?”

I studied it and shook my head. He pointed to a signature at the bottom of the last page. “Blondel.”

“He was a poet and singer. The lover of Richard Lionheart.”

I looked at him, startled. “This must be worth a fortune.”

“He wrote these songs of unfulfilled love when Richard was held captive by the King of Austria.”

“Is this… are these… in our musical notation?”

“Something like it. Why don’t you try and play one, and see?”

The notes were odd, rectangular things. The staffs were only partly there. There were no key signatures. But I thought I might just be able…

The notes came. I played one of Blondel’s songs. It was sad, mournful, the way love often felt to me.

“Transpose it downward.”

I did. It sounded better.

Danilo began to sing.

 

“Though the universe part us

“I am with you, sweet man.

“Like the universe,

“Like the gods,

“Love is eternal.

“Life without you is death.

“Life with you never ends,

“Like the universe.

“Like the gods.”

 

I knew that he was singing it to me. For me.

Nothing else mattered.