A Crimson Warning

26

I thanked the butler, and Ivy and I headed straight for the British Museum. In the carriage on the way over I organized my notes. First, I considered the departments: Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Ancient Near East, Oriental Antiquities, and Medieval and Modern Europe. There were two references to both Ancient Near East and Oriental Antiquities, so I expected to need two objects from each. We had six numbers to go with them, and the six materials.

“Pity there’s nothing Greco-Roman,” Ivy said. “You’d have anything identified along those lines in approximately three minutes. But I suppose these things are never easy, are they?”

We piled out of the cab in Great Russell Street and headed for the entrance of the museum. We went straight for the desk, where I asked if my friend, Mr. May, was available. He was an assistant keeper in the department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, but had a vast knowledge outside of his field and a sharp intellect whose match I’d never met. We’d become congenial on my many trips to the museum, and he helped me on occasion with my work on Homer. I explained the situation, and he grasped it at once.

“Let’s start with Egypt and Sudan,” he said. “That will probably be the most difficult as the galleries will be so crowded. I always prefer to get the hardest out of the way first.” I’d copied out the numbers—118, 104, 152, 187, 28, and 930—along with the list I’d generated from Mr. Dillman’s letter, for each of us.

The first room we entered contained mummies and artifacts that had been buried with them. I knew the mummies were not what we sought, but there was plenty else to investigate. We combed through canopic jars and amulets and sarcophagi, but turned up nothing. Our luck proved no better in the next room, either. When we were halfway through the third, Mr. May pulled me aside.

“I think we’re making a mistake,” he said. “How much did Mr. Dillman know about the Egyptians?”

“I can’t say I know,” I said. “He loved the museum, but I’m not sure he would have considered himself an expert in anything regarding it.”

“That’s exactly what I thought. Come.”

Ivy and I followed him back into the second Egyptian room, where he led us to a case holding several examples of The Book of the Dead.

“A layman may have mistaken papyrus for paper,” he said. At once, we all began checking the numbers.

“Here!” Ivy said, beckoning to us. “I’ve found a 104 and think it may be what we need. It’s from the papyrus of Ani.”

The scene on the papyrus was an image of scales—on one side of them sat a human heart, on the other, a tall white feather.

“The Egyptians believed when a person died, his heart would be weighed against the feather of Ma’at—justice,” Mr. May said. “If his heart was too heavy and didn’t balance, he was thrown to the monster you see there.” He pointed to a figure that was part lion, part hippopotamus, and part crocodile. “The devourer, as he was called, would eat him, and he’d be denied the afterlife.”

“Who officiates the weighing?” I asked.

“Anubis—the jackal-headed god standing in front of the scales. If the heart did balance, the deceased was declared justified, and would be presented to Osiris, god of the underworld.”

“Judgment certainly feels appropriate in the current circumstances,” I said. I copied down the full catalog listing, EA 10470/3, and crossed 104 and paper off my lists. “Where shall we try next?”

“Let’s continue in the Ancient Near East galleries. We’ve two things to search for there, do we not?” We marched through several galleries to a room containing objects from ancient Turkey.

“I never spend enough time up here,” I said, astonished at the array of objects before me. As always, the sense of history overwhelmed me. “Perhaps I’m too focused on Greece.”

“It’s impossible to be too focused on Greece,” Mr. May said. In theory, I could not have agreed more, but I was beginning to think perhaps I should consider broadening my horizons.

We split up and began our quest. This time it was easy—in a matter of minutes, I was calling to my friends.

“Here,” I said. “An ivory griffin-headed demon from Anatolia.”

“It’s beautiful,” Ivy said, bending over for a closer look.

“It probably was part of a throne and meant to provide protection,” Mr. May said. “Eighth to seventh century B.C.”

There were two griffins in the case—one black, one white—displayed next to each other. Ours, the white was, in my estimation, the finer, if smaller, of the two. It was more delicate, and the intricate detail was breathtaking. Every feather on the creature’s wings was exquisitely carved, as were the rippling muscles visible on its legs. The darker material of the other seemed to hide more of its detail despite its larger size.

“Protection and judgment. Perhaps Mr. Dillman trying to make a point to Cordelia,” I said.

“It’s so sad,” Ivy said. “But I suppose we must not lose focus. Where to next, Mr. May?”

“I think we should remain here,” Mr. May said. “We’ve got a second reference for this department, do we not?”

He was correct. Unfortunately, however, our quarry was not so easily found this time. Over the expanse of the Ancient Near East galleries, I looked at what felt like hundreds of objects: gold jewelry, stone statues and reliefs, bronze weapons. But nothing had the right numbers. I circled back to where we’d started, deciding to take each substance in turn. I would begin by focusing on stone.

Nearly an hour later, I still hadn’t met with success. I rubbed my eyes and closed them, wanting to make them focus better. Mr. May came up beside me.

“I’ve found it,” he said, leading me to a case on the far side of the room. He pointed to a row of small heads that looked like they might belong to deranged dogs. “Pazuzu. He can be good or bad. He either spreads evil or stops disease. So he provides a bit of protection, when he’s not busy being an underworld demon. Obviously we want the bronze one.”

“He’s frightful,” Ivy said. “I have a hard time believing he’s ever good. Where is he from?”

“The Assyrians worshipped him as did the Babylonians,” Mr. May said.

“It’s hideous,” I said, staring at the menacing face, its eyes set too far apart and its wide mouth partly open to reveal long fanglike front teeth. “But gloriously hideous.” Again, I copied down all the information from the display card, not knowing what might be important.

“We have two objects from the Department of Oriental Arts,” Mr. May said. “Shall we proceed?”

Oriental Antiquities took up three galleries on a level slightly above the ground floor. We descended the slick marble stairs, pausing to gape at a magnificent Chinese sculpture from the landing halfway down.

“Jade’s obvious for this section,” Ivy said. “Let me set myself to finding it. I shouldn’t have any trouble doing that on my own.”

“Very good,” I said. “That leaves stone and gold. The only other department is Medieval and Modern Europe. What do you think, Mr. May? It seems to me our gold is likely to be there.”

“Entirely likely,” he said. “Let’s look for stone in here.”

I knew very little about Oriental art, and was taken aback by its exotic beauty. Within seconds, the Hindu gods and the elaborate carved scenes depicting their trials and triumphs that filled the gallery space had thoroughly captivated me. I wanted to make sketches of them, to find books that recounted their mythology. I shook my head, forcing myself to regain my focus, and concentrated on my work.

I’d worked through two-thirds of the main gallery and was almost at the end of the Indian section when I saw it. It was the number that first caught my notice, as I’d made myself read the cards before looking at the objects, lest I found myself distracted by their beauty. The number 187 popped out at me and as soon as I’d confirmed the object was indeed what we were looking for, I waved to Mr. May, who had moved into the Chinese portion of the exhibit.

“Mrs. Brandon is up to her ears in jade,” he said. “She wants us to meet her when we’re done.”

“Durga,” I said. “OA 1872.7-1.89. Isn’t she spectacular?”

“Indeed,” he said. “She’s attacking Mahisha, a demon who’s trying to plunge the world into cosmic disorder. It’s a wonderful story. She’s got Shiva’s trident and Vishnu’s discus—they’ve lent them to her because they’re afraid they’ll be destroyed if they go after the beast themselves—see how Durga’s stabbing him with the trident?”

“He looks like a buffalo,” I said.

“Precisely,” Mr. May said. “A terrible buffalo demon. Durga means invincible, you know.”

“Fitting,” I said, gazing upon the magnificent piece. The goddess’s arms—I was trying to make out if she had six or eight—were clad with wide cuff bracelets. She held a sword above her head in one hand and the trident in another. Unfortunately, some of her other hands had been broken off. I wondered if originally she’d been even better armed than she appeared now. Some sort of fearsome creature—a lion, perhaps, crouched below the demon, his jaws clamping down on its leg. I loved the tall, elaborate headdress on Durga’s head, and her heavy earrings. But most of all, I loved her strength, loved that it was she whom the other gods summoned when doom seemed inevitable.

“Are you still with me?” Mr. May asked.

“Of course,” I said. “You do know how I love this place. It’s hard not to get a little distracted. But I promise, I am on task. We should see what Ivy’s got up to. Once we’re done with jade, all that’s left for us is the Middle Ages.”

We went off in search of my friend, who stopped us the moment we approached. “Don’t even think about interfering,” she said. “I am determined to find this one on my own.”

The cases in front of her were full to the bursting, many of the items in them tiny. There were amulets, combs, beads, and countless discs with holes in the center. One case held blades made from jade, which surprised me, as I would not have expected something essentially translucent to be strong enough to be an effective weapon. There were brush pots carved with stunning landscape scenes and images of farmers hard at work, pendants shaped like curvy dragons, and strange, square objects called cong, with tubular holes in the center. I particularly liked a small statue of an animal—some sort of leopard, I thought, crouched and ready to pounce on its prey.

It took only a few more minutes for Ivy to throw up her hands, victorious. “I see it: 28,” she said, a smile on her face. “And look at him.” The piece was a jade mask, barely human, with horrible veins in his forehead, horns on his head, and fangs shooting out of his open mouth.

“Jade was considered extremely potent by the ancient Chinese. It could offer one protection, even in the afterlife,” Mr. May said. “But this isn’t the sort of thing I’d want in my house, no matter how powerful it was.”

“It’s scary,” Ivy said. “I’d have nightmares.”

“Do you think?” I asked, tilting my head. “There’s a beauty to him. And such a lovely contrast—the frightening demon fashioned out of such a beautiful, smooth stone.”

“I’d be happy to never lay eyes on it again,” Ivy said. “But that may be due to nothing more than it having taken me so long to find it.”

“This last one shouldn’t be too difficult,” Mr. May said. “Come back upstairs. The Medieval and Modern Europe galleries aren’t excessively large, and we know we’re looking for gold.”

He was right; it wasn’t difficult. We each started at a different spot and quickly read the catalog numbers of each pertinent object. For all the breathtaking gold in the museum, Mr. Dillman had chosen something understated but deeply moving to represent the category. I found the piece, and felt my limbs go heavy and my blood seem to stop moving when I saw what went with the number. A slim, gold and enameled ring.

“Seventeenth century,” I said as my friends gathered around. “A mourning ring. The inscription reads, Memento mori—‘In remembrance of death.’”

Around the outside of the ring was a series of bleak images. First, a skeleton holding an hourglass, which I took to be a reminder of our own mortality. Then came tools for digging a grave, and a sheath in which a body could be wrapped before burial.

“It reminds me of Cordelia’s locket,” I said. “That didn’t start as mourning jewelry, but it certainly became just that.”

The room felt colder, and I was happy to turn away from the ring. In the case behind me, there was another display. More mourning rings, a great heap of them, all from the seventeenth century. I thought of all the people who died during the great plagues of the Middle Ages, and wondered what had become of those who had worn these rings. How long did they survive after the loss of their loved one? Did they succumb to the disease as well? Next to the rings was a small, gold cup, which had been made out of melted-down bands. After their owners had died, there must have been no one left to want even their most precious jewelry.

It was frightening how temporary the significance of any person was in the end.