We will live long lives, together, my... my love, as will the cats, and we will just have to find a kingdom that doesn’t engage in unsafe behaviour,’ replied Gnathos. ‘I have just the place in mind, Stable government, polytheic, civilized. Also they are very musical.’
‘And you will stay with me?’ asked Andros.
‘Of course. Always. And with the cats.’
They kissed again until Basht interrupted.
‘You not only rescued us from death, but you said you would take us to a land where our kittens would be worshipped as gods,’ Basht reminded Gnathos.
‘That’s true, we will go there just as soon as the water goes down. I have a lovely place in mind for the City of Cats.’
‘Come and lie down with me,’ suggested Andros, embracing his lover and drawing him down on the second best bed cover. ‘Now we are humans, and we can love, and dance and sing, and maybe we will laugh, as well.’
Gnathos subsided into his arms with great joy. His lips curved, his mouth opened. He laughed. Andros laughed. And both cats purred.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTE: The city of Bubastis, centre of the worship of the Cat Goddess, Basht, has many mummified cats. Such as have been examined have been DNA tested to belong to a strain of felis sylvestris and felis lybica, a striped cat such as one sees in Egypt even today. No one has ever found the neat, elegant black cats, who were the model for the innumerable statues of the Goddess herself. Striped cats can undergo chinchillization,or melanization, which fades their stripes, but the avatars of the Goddess are all black, unrelieved by any marks. Further investigation at Bubastis may elucidate this puzzle.
THE LIBRARY ANGEL
LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA, ROMAN CONQUEST EGYPT B C 30.
The smoke was already trickling under the closed door. Marcus Tullius Corvinus grabbed the Homeric hymns, which he had been construing, and grappled them to his breast. Whatever the cost, these should not burn, must not burn. The scroll was heavy but he managed to seize a couple of epics as he ran past, seeking the outer gate into the colonnade that gave directly onto the sea.
The scrolls were inscribed in oak-gall ink. Even if they got soaked, they would not blur. The immortal words would not be lost to the night or war and barbarity, roaring towards scholarship and learning, knowledge and wisdom, with the fires from the burning ships. The library of Alexandria was a great monument and treasure of the world. The Romans probably wouldn’t mean to burn it down. But they wouldn’t overly care if they did.
Marcus got to the gate and a rush of flame, gusting with the high wind, forced him back. He stumbled into another scholar on the same errand, Egyptian by the look of him, a load of treatises in his arms.
‘The wooden fence and landing stage is afire,’ he gasped, ‘and there’s smoke coming under the other door.’
‘Windows?’ asked the Egyptian. They scanned the room. There were a few windows, but they were high up, too high for either of them to reach alone.
‘Take the scrolls,’ ordered Marcus. ‘I’m Marcus, what’s your name, fellow scholar?’
‘Imhotep,’ said the Egyptian. The kohl around his beautiful eyes was running down his face in black tears. ‘What do you intend?’
‘I’ll boost you up, you can get out through the window,’ said Marcus. ‘Take the Hymns of Homer with you, they must not be lost.’
‘But you’ll die,’ protested the Egyptian. ‘I would not leave you to perish.’
‘What scrolls do you have?’ asked Marcus, pulling a table over to the wall and climbing on it.
‘Treatise on Surgery, there’s only one, it saves lives,’ said Imhotep. ‘All of it, eight scrolls. That, too, must not be lost.’
‘This window faces onto the stone landing stage where the foreign ships come in. If we wrap them in something, make a bag, that ought to work.’ Marcus dragged off his tunic, piled the scrolls into it, and pinned it shut with his fibulae. The brooches kept the cloth close around the precious writing.
‘Now, up you go,’ urged Marcus. ‘If you stand on my shoulders, you can reach the opening. Hurry, it’s getting hard to breathe.’
Imhotep scaled the naked frame of the young Roman, dragged the scrolls to the window and shoved them out. But there was not a chance that he could fit his body through that narrow embrasure. Imhotep half slid, half fell, into the embrace of Marcus Corvinus.
‘We can’t get out,’ whispered the Egyptian, taking them both to the cold stone floor, where there was still a little air. ‘But the scrolls are safe.’
The Egyptian drew his fine woollen cloak over the two of them, so that they should not feel the teeth of the fire. Marcus Corvinus wrapped Imhotep in a fast embrace.
‘It is an honour,’ he gasped, as darkness crept over his sight, ‘to die with such a devoted scholar’.
Imhotep prayed while he could still form words, then snuggled into the Roman’s body. To die was to return to one’s mother, to go back to the source of all comfort. To die was to sleep the deepest sleep of all.
They slept. The fire roared overhead, licking up words, Greek and Egyptian and Latin, eating knowledge, consuming wisdom, leaving nothing behind but a Roman victory and a thick layer of ash.
Imhotep woke, which was a surprise. Surely they couldn’t have survived that inferno! He was still lying with his Roman, under the cloak Imhotep’s father had woven for him. But there was no sound or heat outside the shelter of the cloth.
He lifted one corner and exclaimed, ‘Isis! Hail, Lady, Keeper of the Door of the Underworld!’
‘If you wish,’ replied the tall, elegant, onlooker. He had a golden aura around his curly head, a white robe and long, white wings.
Strange, thought Imhotep, Isis is supposed to be a Goddess. This is a God of some sort. I don’t recognise him. And I know all of the Ennead.
‘Are you Thanatos?’ croaked Marcus Corvinus, waking and leaning on his Egyptian’s shoulder. Odd, he thought, Thanatos, God of Death, is supposed to be a dark angel.
‘I can be Thanatos if you require,’ replied the figure. His voice was even and musical. And patient.
‘We died, didn’t we? In the fire?’ reasoned Imhotep. ‘I didn’t think we could survive that, Marcus.’
‘No, ’Hotep, we evidently didn’t survive. And, if you would be so good, Honoured Celestial Being,’ Marcus and Imhotep levered themselves to their feet, creaking in every muscle, ‘I regret that I have no sacrifice to offer, but could you tell us where we are?’
‘This is The Library,’ replied the God. ‘And I am the Library Angel. Come along, now, you need to bathe, and then there will be a feast in your honour.’
‘A feast?’ asked Imhotep, following the angel, an arm around Marcus’ waist as the Roman’s was around his shoulders.
‘Well, of course,’ said the angel. ‘You saved the Treatise on Surgery and the Homeric Hymns. Naturally there would be a feast. Here is the bath. Someone will come with some refreshments and some clothes, if you would like to wear them. Then you may rest until I come to fetch you. People find the transition tiring, when it has been so,’ the angel shuddered, ‘violent.’
Marcus and Imhotep staggered into the bath. It was a series of large, steamy, tiled and painted rooms, where they were immediately surrounded by a crowd of nude boys and girls who stripped off the burned remains of Imhotep’s cloth and sat them down on chairs to be scrubbed with a strange substance which foamed;