When Imhotep and Marcus Tullius Corvinus were rinsed as clean as the newborn, the humming attendants ushered them out of the washing room and conducted them down the steps into a sumptuous bath, into warm water which was so mineral rich that they were buoyed up. Marcus caught Imhotep’s hand and they floated together, linked, staring up at a ceiling which was made of immeasurable space, powdered by a million stars.
‘I don’t hurt anymore,’ commented Marcus. ‘All those little burns and bruises are gone. And you, my devout scholar?’
‘Yes, I feel completely unharmed. Is this your afterlife?’ asked Imhotep. ‘If so, it was very kind of you to invite me to come with you. It’s lovely.’
Marcus shivered and pulled Imhotep into the curve of his body.
‘No, my afterlife is both tedious and frightening. Not a good place at all. And to test the hypothesis, in my afterlife you can’t remember what it was to be alive. And I remember everything.’
‘So do I. This isn’t the Field of Reeds either, though don’t think I’m complaining. And did you recognise the Library Angel? And those little winged children?’
‘No, I haven’t studied much comparative religion,’ replied Marcus. ‘But you’ll stay with me? You don’t want to leave me to go to the Field of Reeds?’
‘I’ll stay,’ promised Imhotep. He relaxed in the warm water, feeling the ache of his loss dissolving in the water. ‘I would not be able to go there, anyway. My body must have been burned to ash in the fire; no mummified body, no Field of Reeds.’
‘That seems unjust,’ commented Marcus. ‘I think I like this afterlife better than either.’
‘Yes. And, do you know, Marcus, even though I’m definitely dead, I’m hungry and thirsty. Can we get out and find some of those refreshments of which the angel spoke?’
‘An excellent notion,’ replied Marcus.
The refreshments were a fine loaf of wheat bread, a plait of honey-poppyseed cake, several cheeses, a variety of fruits and a large jug of wine. Marcus looked around for a mixing bowl and a water jug, did not find them, tasted, and smiled. He filled two cups.
‘This is wonderful,’ he said to Imhotep, as they sat on a pile of pillows on a warm wooden floor in a hall hung with tapestries. ‘It would be a crime to dilute it. Drink with me?’ he asked, looking into the Egyptian’s dark eyes. ‘I don’t know how long this is going to last, if we’re dreaming so as not to feel the fire, but I want to eat and drink, and then I want to make love with you, most beautiful of scholars. Before the spell changes. Before it all turns to ash.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Imhotep, biting into a red fruit which trickled juice down his chin. Marcus leaned forward and licked it up. It tasted wonderful. ‘But this has a more permanent feeling than a dream. This is certainly a Heavenly fruit,’ he said. ‘This is nectar and ambrosia, and I would make love to you for all the time there is, until the ending of the world.’
They lay together gently, slowly, not altogether believing that each touch was real. They mouthed the divine grapes, sucking sweet juice from each other’s skin, kissing through an aeon, caressing and holding. Each caress seemed to be magnified, their skin sensitised by the cleansing, and when they cried out together the winged attendants heard, and sent up a humming paean of joy.
Marcus laughed, looking down into Imhotep’s face. He kissed him. Imhotep tasted of grapes and flowers.
‘If it all ceases, and we go into the dark,’ he told his fellow scholar, ‘it will have been worth dying to embrace you.’
‘I love you, Marcus. I treasure your love. And I saved the Treatise on Surgery, and you saved the Homeric Hymns, so it was worth our lives.’
‘It was,’ agreed Marcus. ‘But I had not expected such an extravagant reward.’
Imhotep kissed him again.
Marcus elected for a tunic and Imhotep for a cloth, and they were conducted to the feast by the Library Angel. The hall was like none they had ever seen, huge and noisy, with lot of tables and chairs and hundreds of scholars, all talking and drinking and disputing. And a group of them, in one corner, were singing.
‘I present them to you,’ announced the Angel, and the room fell silent. ‘Marcus Tullius Corvinus and Imhotep, who died in saving the Homeric Hymns and the Treatise on Surgery. The hymns inspired poets through all ages, and the Treatise educated a thousand years of healers. Hail!’ cried the Angel, and the whole company surged to their feet and cried, ‘Hail!’
‘And who’s that?’ asked Marcus of their table-mate, Captain Elijah Raven, a grizzled old man who had smuggled Ancient Greek manuscripts out of Romanian monasteries just ahead of another purge of literature. He had one leg and a parrot called Livy on his shoulder, and Marcus liked him instantly.
‘That’s Pan Tzu,’ said the Captain. ‘He carved the Analects of Confucius on stones and laid ’em face down in a path, so that after the Tiger of Ch’in was dead, philosophy could emerge again. That’s Hypatia, martyred for learning, what they forbad to women. And all them women over there, they’re witches, what wrote down their spells and recipes so other women didn’t die. And burned for it. Good earthy company for a man like me, them witches. The singers, they’re bards and troubadours; they remembered what couldn’t be written down. The women over there are the storytellers – they remembered tales that would have died out, if they hadn’t told ’em to the childer. The ones in them puffy breeks, they’re Shakespeare and his pals. I like Will. He said he’s here to improve his Greek. That chatty bloke, that’s Sir Thomas Browne, who wrote the Bibliographica Abscondita, making people look for old books, and that’s Mr Cotton, who bought ’em when I brung ’em. Nice old man, used to give me brandy, I used to bring ’im them fruits done up in sugar, not a tooth to ’is head but one and that was ’is sweet tooth, poor man. That’s Keats, who died for ’is verse, and that’s... oh, you’ll meet ‘em all, good fellows, most of ‘em. Have some beer?’
‘Do we stay here forever?’ asked Imhotep.
‘Forever and a day, my son,’ said the Captain, ‘as long as you want to be ’ere. All the lost books are in the library. If you saved a book, and you work on it, then someone in the world below will be inspired by your work. Everything we do here has its reflection in the world. Aye, somewhere some student is reading your hymns, boy, and will write a novel with a new translation that will set another soul afire. As above, so below, that’s what Master Josephus says. What more could you want? Food’s good, ale’s better. You’ve got your lover, Marcus, and your work. And if you study too much, if you tire of learning, they’ll hale you out, to fly into the stars, or bask on a beach with blue sand or bathe in the light of three moons. Universe’s your oyster. There’s a lot of advantage in being dead, I find,’ confided the Captain. His parrot Livy croaked an assent and beaked a fig, spitting the stalk down the Captain’s shirt collar.
Marcus embraced Imhotep and surveyed the gathering. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What do you say, my heart?’
‘Yes,’ replied Imhotep. A wealth, a treasury, of books awaited them. He felt light headed with joy. ‘More wine, my love?’
AQUAE SULIS
He grabbed me, pulled me against his bare chest, and said urgently, ‘Quick, lose the bathers!’
I hardly had time to say ‘What?’ before I was stripped and someone was kneeling at my feet, mouthing at my hip, nuzzling my upper thigh. I groaned, only partly in surprise.
About half a moment before, I had been about to step into the Minerva pool at the Thermae Spa in Bath. I was, admittedly, wearing a pair of terrible swimmers. They bore the Union