Since dawn, Annie had been pointing toward the Great Pyramid. By the time Pankh arrived in midmorning, Annie's gestures had crossed the language barrier. Renifer coaxed Pankh to take them to see the Pyramid.
Pankh was unwilling.
It took considerable pouting and pleading to change his mind. Renifer was excellent at both. Flouncing around in her dress, a very thin gauze pressed in stiff pleats, Renifer made it clear that neither gold nor gifts would make her happy. Only an excursion to the Pyramid.
Finally Pankh shrugged and nodded.
Annie held Renifer's hand as they threaded through narrow streets shaded by canvas canopies, lined with stalls selling spices and cookpots and shoes. They passed walled houses and tenements, donkeys tied in stable yards, geese in the road and even a royal procession.
Everybody knelt to gaze lovingly at a young woman on a litter covered in beaten gold. A princess, perhaps, reclining on pillows under her fringed shade? Four bulky men in tiny white kilts carried the litter on their shoulders. They walked rhythmically, one counting, like rowers on a crew team.
At the waterfront, Pankh commandeered a boat. Two men rowed half-standing, toes braced against a shelf. They moved quickly on the river, a breeze bucketing inside a much-mended sail. Annie was mesmerized by the water traffic: little boats, tubby boats, oared boats and sailboats, barges loaded with stone or casks, logs or bales.
Along the banks of the Nile, hundreds of men labored, making bricks out of mud. Villages were perched on the heights, their little mud-brick dwellings like piles of little brown wren houses.
From the Nile, they entered a canal, straight-sided as a ruler, slicing through fields and orchards, palm trees and grazing sheep. They steered into a square lake, neatly sided by cut stone, and pulled up to a wharf. Soldiers paced up and down. Small sphinxes were being set in rows.
Pankh swept his two women before him and up to a vast temple.
So modern and harsh was its design Annie felt it could have been an electric power plant in Chicago or Detroit. They did not enter the temple, but walked through a vast portico and emerged on a paved pedestrian street with awnings stretched over pillars. Flowers had been laid on the whole length of the road, bouquet after bouquet, and their feet crunched on the sun-dried petals.
At the end of the shining road was Khufu's Pyramid.
In the museum photograph, the Pyramid had been tiers of great lumps, two million brown sugar cubes, each the size of a dining room table. But at its creation, the Pyramid was slick with polished white limestone. It was surrounded by a sea of baby pyramids, flat-topped pyramids, temples, graveyards, mausoleums, steles— and one vast Sphinx, being chipped out of bedrock as Annie watched.
She began laughing with excitement. Strat must be here! This was the very place where he had taken his photographs. She must keep her eyes open.
She examined every passing man, giggling at the thought of Victorian Strat wearing a white gauze kilt like Pankh.