To Breathe the Breath of Isis

By Elizabeth Marx

One woman. One man. An eternity of love hammered into twenty-one pieces of silver.

Marguerite is a victim of a vicious attack. The resulting brain damage causes amnesia and when she inexplicably appears in a tomb in Thebes, she insists she was coming to meet Robert Bruton. Disorientated, destitute, and alone, she senses that her necklace has led her to this familiar swashbuckler who takes her breath away; however, he claims he does not know her.

Lord Robert Bruton, eminent Egyptologist, and possible spy for the crown, has never discovered anything as captivating as the young woman he recovers unconscious on his dig. He has staked his career on finding the final resting place of Queen Tiye and wonders why Marguerite possesses a piece of jewelry belonging to the Eighteenth Dynasty queen. She could be a tomb robber, an American spy, or a madwoman spouting fantastical stories.

As the necklace’s curse is revealed, the fire of Marguerite’s and Bruton’s ancient bond burns between them. But when Marguerite disappears, Bruton fears that the wings of Isis have carried away the true treasure he has been seeking his entire life.

For to breathe the breath of Isis is to be reborn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elizabeth Marx
• Release date: Nov 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466023291

Elizabeth Marx

Windy City writer Elizabeth Marx writes deeply emotional romances that take her readers on a roller coaster ride through desire and despair. Elizabeth’s cosmopolitan flair for fiction makes her unafraid to push you over that first drop just when you think you know what’s going to happen next. Her writing is described as hilarious, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. Her characters achieve the ‘happily ever after’ through a journey of poignant and passionate moments.In her past incarnation she was an interior designer—not a decorator—which basically means she has a piece of paper to prove that she knows how to match and measure things and can miraculously make mundane pieces of furniture appear to be masterpieces.Elizabeth grew up in Illinois but has also lived in Texas and Florida. If she’s not pounding her head against the wall trying to get the words just right, you can find her in her garden. Elizabeth resides with her husband and an Aussie wigglebutt.Elizabeth has traveled extensively, but still says there’s no town like Chi-Town.You can contact the author at [e-mail] or visit her website www.elizabethmarxbooks.com

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PROLOGUE

Marguerite entered the shadowy gangway without any qualms about her safety. She was lost in imaginings of sand-swept monuments and jeweled treasures harvested from desecrated tombs. She was considering the other necklace pieces she had seen that afternoon, they were almost identical to hers. She wondered if they had been linked into a single piece. She thought about the woman who wore such an elaborate adornment: Did she feel blessed by its beauty, or was it an emotionally-embellished choke collar?

She continued walking through the gangway which was similar to the one she’d played in during her childhood, a crumbling sidewalk with a drain gutter cantering alongside the two-story brick wall. The mouth of the passage was flanked by quoins at the corners of the two buildings, shoring up the entrance like ancient pilasters defending temple secrets. It was reminiscent of the innumerable open-aired temples through which she had walked in her youth.

She glanced up at the stars, aligning in the nighttime sky with warnings and provocations only understood by gods, and whispered among the priestly castes.

The air was laced with balsam sap; it expanded in her lungs and sucked her along the walkway. One could almost hear the velvety moss burning across tree bark; it brought mottled bumps to her arms. Tree roots delivered new life to their limbs even as hers became heavy. Bulbs that had been planted deep in fall shadows pushed against the recently warmed soil, as an impatient soul pushes against its linen bindings.

Something more prickled her spine, a faint whiff of spicy incense, and for an instantaneous second, her eyes involuntarily closed with reverence. Once upon a time, that fragrance had been a place of solace, like the draft of a spring breeze beneath a sparrow’s wing. She halted mid-stride, brushing the scattered remembrance away. She’d stripped the rough edges of those memories from her flesh, as if bark from a hardened tree, and her mind cleared to be reborn a sapling.

A piece of glass crunched under her next footstep; she looked up. One of the lamps that usually greeted her was out. The black metal fixture beckoned like a single crooked fingertip. Challenging her fear of dark confined spaces, it summoned her, and she replied with a confident step into a false sense of security.

Reaching the middle of the gangway, the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck screamed to their sisters along her arms. In that instant, there was a movement, a repositioning, then utter stillness. The spicy scent wasn’t a scant memory; it was a warning. Veneration escaped her senses, as heart pounding fear filled her consciousness, urging her to turn and take flight like a frightened reed warbler sighting a black-necked cobra. The yearning to soar away ebbed through her as the impulse to run reached her limbs.

The length of her hair trailed her escape as she turned to run, but a clever hand clutched and then entwined the strands, insuring that her fingers would never brush the lever on the red-oxidized gate. Her perpetrator swung her around, pulling her along the damp bricks, dragging her face over the mortared joints with purpose. A loud wince escaped her, before the pain stole her breath, as grit and gravel abraded her lips.

Even in the swirling darkness, she knew that he had come for a final reckoning.

Don’t worry, Marguerite. Where you’re going your face will be of little consequence. He pulled her head back like a victor over his conquered subject, before condemning it against the bricks as easily as a judge would his gavel against the denounced.

Her nose fractured as effortlessly as an egg, and the smell of blood flowed free, as if in sacrifice.

She managed to whisper under her breath, To speak the name of the dead is to make them live again.

But before a single scream could escape her lips, his other hand covered her mouth. She gagged on a sharp twang of gasoline.

I would love to listen to your Egyptian sentiments before you die, but opportunity doesn’t afford me that chance.

Marguerite twisted her body to no avail, grunted, then dropped her body weight in an effort to free herself from his grasp, but he was twice her size and easily recovered.

In retaliation for her insolence, he slammed her skull into the wall again. Her teeth rattled and screeched along their tracks like the elevated train she could hear in the distance.

Fleeting thoughts of him discarding her body urged her to give voice to her dilemma, but when she tried to articulate, her words were muffled in bloody saliva. The otherworldly pain in her head, the shriek of terror that could rip hearts out, was silenced by a silky piece of fabric, which swelled as it was forced into her mouth.

Throughout her life she’d had a strong voice, and she was never afraid to use it, but now he’d rendered her silent.

Her scream reverberated in her skull and through the sheer agony, she focused on her predicament; remaining conscious was imperative, but clarity spun in murky waters, their depths alluring, and her desire to tumble down weightless beneath its waves beguiled her.

He wrenched her shoulder bag away. She could hear her token personal effects as they danced along the walkway becoming her grave goods.

Errant tears stung her eyes and ran to her chin along with her blood. She drew in gurgling breaths and the fountain of blood saturated the vile piece of material that probably boasted a bright color, if anything his neckties were always bold. While she continued to fight him, to find purchase in his clothing or his flesh, her head rolled forward and was buried in his chest. His musky cologne tainted what oxygen she could gasp.

He pushed her spine against the wall, tearing apart her dress and clawing her flesh with rough, knowing fingers. He rammed his knee against her center, sending a spike of pain so acute that it fed directly into her brain, which was dangling precariously close to unconsciousness. He lifted her leg pushing her wide, and her shoe fell into the drain way.

You are mine, he sniggered through an alcohol-laced breath.

His laughter, it’s careening, raging, savage-bitterness sent her away from her own body. She knew the taunting that came after his initial amusement was always worse than the time before, so instead of scratching away at him, her eyelids fluttered, brushing the crests of her scraped cheeks, and she willed her inner-self away.

She never fathomed not fighting for her life, but she had grown weary battling a relentless enemy. What death offered her in this hollowed-out corridor was the only path left to her. She raised her head to the night sky and chanted in her mind. I shall not be afraid for my body; for words and magic shall overcome this evil for me. I shall see the lord of light, I shall live there. Make way for me.

The world did not go black as she surrendered her physical body. She found herself, her Ba, rising through the gangway, her invisible, spiritual element free to wander now at will. She gazed through the darkness wishing for some scant moonbeam to light her final farewells. The clouds parted, and the moon’s luminescence cast eerie, opaque shadows as a gentle drizzle began to fall. She watched below, as the watery creation of the world cleansed her corporeal body in absolution, and her ethereal form drank in the water of baptism.

Her spirit eyes, now alert, searched the surface of the walls trying to get them to divulge their secrets like long buried hieroglyphs. When nothing was revealed, she perched her Ba high on the edge of the flattop roof, admiring her own ethereal form, her composition was made of minute pieces of brilliant electrified glass. Her head still felt heavy, though, and when she touched her forehead her fingertips brushed a large headdress. Her vision crystallized; the dimness illuminated. She was able to see in a one hundred and eighty degree arc, farther and deeper with this new, bird-like clarity.

With her heightened senses, she gazed below, as he tried to push into her unresponsive body. Unable to succeed, he slapped her body’s face trying to rouse her. She raised her spectral arms overhead, as if for the gods to witness the absurdity of the attacker’s actions, but he was as blind to the existence of her soul’s independence as he was to the loss of love she once felt for him.

She had been a possession to him, a prize, a body to do with as he wished, and now she was happy to surrender that, and only that.

You brainless bitch, you do not get to die before I want you to.

Her physical body slid down the wall in response.

He started pounding on her chest trying to force air into her lungs.

She nodded her headdress in disbelief, and tiny shimmering particles shook away on the breeze. Even her death needed to go just as he had planned it, or he was enraged.

As he continued his rant, she refused to play audience to his insanity any longer. Instead, she floated back and forth along the flat roofline, counting bricks, observing crumbling mortar, finding exposed tar paper, searching all the nooks and crannies where pestilence could enter and destroy. Biding her time until the holy ones would come to wrap her body. She explored the walls, dejected that there were no symbols eternally etched to guide her journey to the next world.

She should have been filled with anger, animosity, or fear, but in a complete disconnect from the pain of her body, she only felt the release of freedom as she listened to stillness fold in around her, in this place that would become her sepulcher.

Her body below gasped in wrenching breaths trying to maintain her bodily functions. It contorted in pain and gurgled, as if her internal organs were being carved out with a stick, but she was no longer part of that damaged vessel.

A door slammed nearby.

Her attacker looked up, raging mad at the interruption. He stood stock still, listening, waiting for what would come next.

Her ethereal form and his human form both turned, as heavy-booted feet took to the wooden front steps, keys jingled, a door opened and shut, and illumination poured through the windows from what had once been her safe haven.

Robert had come home early, but he hadn’t parked in the detached garage and taken the route through the gangway.

If you happen to survive me, I doubt the professor will feel the same way about you now. He sneered at her motionless body as he kicked her face. He bent down, snatching something from around her neck, and then turned her head to examine his work. His gleaming white smile bounced off a metal can at his feet. He kicked it, and its contents swam over the sidewalk and into the drain way.

You belong to me and only me. Try to remember that next time. Then he swiped away the blood on his wing-tipped shoes before moving toward the alley. He stopped, struck a wooden match against the wall, and dropped it into the gutter before disappearing into a blackened crevice.

Marguerite watched from her perch as her body’s hand went to her neck almost as if in reflex. Worse than taking her life, he had taken the untarnished necklace of silver, the one thing she had possessed that was as bright as the moonlight, imperishable, and divine. The loss pierced the fragile skin of her essence and came out the other side of her heart, forcing her to shudder.

She flitted back and forth over her shell. That’s all it was, an empty vessel, devoid of true-life without her soul. She had to choose: go back to her broken body and fight, or take flight, jubilant and unencumbered. She looked between her contorted form and the sky above several times, her body below strangled out a single death cry, beckoning her return, begging for her assistance, gasping for air as an arrow of flame ran along the edges of the walkway.

Marguerite had wondered as of late, how it was possible to stop loving someone, and now she seized her own conclusions: pain and sorrow. With the infliction of enough pain to the body or sorrow to the spirit, love’s balance is washed away almost as if you’ve never loved at all. This spectacular revelation of the innermost workings of the heart came unbidden; this insight and the knowledge of it, offered her new clarity.

She barely moved her arms to scale higher into the night on feather-light wings that sprouted the length of her arms. The wings bore the beaten strength of hammered silver and precious stones, and they were more than capable of taking her to the world beyond. She reached the top of the sycamore tree’s branches, its giant arms overhanging the parkway, blocking most of the street-lamps before she looked down again, mesmerized by the flames licking along the brick walls for something more to consume.

Her primordial heap’s blood ran fast, glistening in the flames, as if a lover for an embrace. The vivid image of her carcass’ twitching vulnerability was raw and would be forever etched in her memory, but it did not distress her.

Strong whispered words carried over the crackling fire from some unseen force. The beautiful one of silver, my child, inert and lifeless, thy heart is still. I will not abandon you. I bedew the ground with the water of mine eyes, and I lament with the foam of my lips.

The voice startled her and entreated her return to her body while the sky’s vibrant stars beckoned her onward, the air crisp enough to fly with little exertion. She glanced back and forth, mourning her body’s sacrifice, but seeking her soul’s liberty.

As she ascended, a beam of perfectly proportioned light at the far end of the gangway distracted her intention as the gate clanged open. She hesitated, caught between the light and the night sky, letting her wings flap, breathing life into the gangway below, fanning the flames, and filling the recess with the harsh scent of coppery-spattered mortality.

A voice in the shaft of white light christened the sacred space with the call of her name, as if whispered from a dream. Even her ethereal form quivered with anticipation of all the things unspoken in the desperation of just the syllables of her name.

Her love attacked the flames with his jacket, as his pleas grew shrill their appeal weighed her down, as if she was bound to earth by his desire alone. She glanced at her wings, which had only moments ago held her so confidently. They were glowing—no, smoldering—ablaze in his anxiety.

Oh God, Marguerite, please not this, he strangled out, as he slipped in her cold running blood, gathering her lifeless form into his shuddering arms.

He weeps at the greatness of his misery, the unseen female voice cajoled, her voice turning stern with determination, He demands your return.

Marguerite’s wings grew heavier, and she descended a few feet further, close enough to see Robert’s glistening tears.

She sighed at the mere sight of him, her shimmering wings diminished, and her uncertainty pulled her down. She prayed for strength enough to depart and mercy for his anguish.

But the Goddess, the Divine One, the Queen of the Earth, the Queen of Heaven, or whatever you prefer to call Her had decided that matters of this lifetime were not yet done with her.

Thou shall not die by the flame of his poison, by him whose throat is foul. It is only I who am the giver of life, the expirer of souls. The deep feminine voice vibrated off the walls. They are her tears, the tears of Isis that make the river to rise. The breath of her breath shall revive you that are without fault. I come from the place of yesterday, on the wings of the night, and the boat of the disk to driveth away the repulsive poison and the slayer of thine heart; you shall heal within a nest of papyrus plants.

The words registered a moment before Marguerite’s Ba plummeted back toward earth. She was unaware, as she crossed the threshold of this decision, that she was dissolving a precarious seal, and her world would never be the same. But she heeded Her divine intervention.

Marguerite prayed that Isis had provided something more significant than a convoluted funeral pyre or sarcophagus of beaten silver to catch what was left of her soul.

PART I

TO BREATHE THE BREATH OF ISIS IS TO BE REBORN

1

EXPEDITION NOTES:

November 12 Tuesday

Structure: TT 22

Location: Valley of the Kings, Thebes West Bank

Owner: King Amenhotep III

Type: Tomb

Site Location: Latitude 25.44N— Longitude 32.36E

Decoration: Painting and graffiti

Categories of recovered objects, as of last year’s excavation: accessories, architectural elements, carpenters’ & sculptors’ tools, furniture, human remains, and wax-sealed unopened water jars.

On behalf of the British School of Archeology in Egypt, under my direction, the search for Queen Tiye’s tomb continues. My quest resumes under cooler than customary temperatures. The river is below normal level, making the locals irritable as at least one-half of their livelihoods still depends on the ebb and flow of the Nile and the richness of their sugarcane crops. I established a base camp at TT22, Amenhotep III’s tomb.

Upon my immediate return to Egypt this season, I decided to reexamine all related tombs, sites, and documentation to ascertain if I overlooked some clue that would help pinpoint a location. Otherwise, I fear I will be digging sondages over the face of the continent much the way that H.C. does and without his seemingly unlimited resources.

We had a skeletal crew working for market day, hauling debris that had refilled TT22 in the months since last season’s completion. Set with their instructions for clearing, and with little else to do there, I set off south, to TT23 the tomb of Queen Tiye’s brother Ay. There is much in the way of hieroglyphics in that tomb, and I hoped to find more references to his sister and her whereabouts.

TT23 is located part way up the west branch of the main wadi, it is in this area of my dig, between the two kings’ tombs, that I hope to locate her tomb. Tiye was a powerful Queen and very involved in the management of Egypt and she could have well been bestowed the honor of burial in the King’s Valley. I have extensively exhausted both the Queen’s Valley and El-Amarna and have only to search here. Perhaps she wishes to remain elusive as only the most beautiful and powerful of her sex do.

I worked the hieroglyphs that ran along the corridor that led to the unique burial chamber in which the deceased Ay is shown in a marsh. Hassan, my foreman arrives unannounced. He is vexed, having found something back in TT22, and he insists on my immediate return.

So after the ceaseless obstacles to the expedition, I would be damned if after only two short weeks all work did not have to come to a complete halt.

BRUTON

2

TOMB TREASURE

Hassan’s agitated shadow marches across the ochre-colored walls, blocking Lord Bruton’s view and disturbing his solitude and contemplation. In Hassan’s rush to locate his employer, his sandals kick up enough sand to imagine the flight of ducks in the papyrus thicket are trying to take off.

Hassan’s stony-eyed expression, which normally reveals little of his true thoughts are explicitly displeased as he turns to dispense news. There is a woman in tomb twenty-two.

Lord Bruton remains crouched, but stares up at Hassan, as if wondering why the foreman came so far to advise him of this. They often find Egyptian women overcome from the heat about the site. Why the women venture so far from their villages to see so surly a group is a curiosity to me.

"Milord, you must come and see to her." Hassan insists as he heads toward the entrance.

Bruton gazes at his oil lamp. The cup is still half full, and there is no scent of smoke. The length of the wick indicates that he has been transcribing only three hours. He looks down at his notebook. The heiress of great praises, the lady of two worlds, Bruton mumbles under his breath, brushing off his knees, before traipsing behind Hassan.

Hassan steps out of the decorated chamber, and into the unembellished passageway, as he continues praising the woman.

Lord Bruton scratches his goatee. Hassan, so many words on this one subject?

Hassan’s tributes to this ‘most well-favored woman’ echo down the chamber corridors, swirling in the dust behind him, as the spry man takes to the wide steps. As they ascend to the final gateway from the tomb, they both peer out measuring the sun. It is high in the sky, and the heat rises from the deserted path in vibrating waves.

It happens to be bloody hot. Lord Bruton insists. I do not see the need to mount a horse and make my way back to camp.

Milord, she is uncommon, even among the ladies of your station. Hassan turns, urging him through the exit with Arabic hand gestures. One such as her rarely ventures further than the front stairs of the Winter Palace.

Bruton turns his head curiously. I say, Hassan, is she English?

Hassan nods in the affirmative, as if for the first time he is making headway with a stubborn English mind.

Bruton steps straightaway through the entrance of the tomb, almost as a thief toward an unbroken seal.

Pharaoh is saddled and dancing in place; the spirited horse is excited at the thought of a race through the desert.

Hassan mounts his camel and turns in the other direction; he swats two fellahin out of his way, before yelling over his shoulder, I will fetch Dr. B.

Bruton blathers in the direction of the basket-boy holding Pharaoh’s reins. Ubaid, did Hassan say the woman was injured?

When the dark-skinned boy bobbles his shoulders up, his shadow casts an image mimicking a scrawny camel. Bruton boots his mount, looking heavenward, judging the time by the angle of the sun at about one o’clock.

The blistering blaze of heat feeds across the path like a flame burning the wick of an explosive. He lowers his hat across his brow and sets the Arabian at a quicker pace. It’s a half-mile journey, but the meandering lane in the wadi is as crooked as the rocks that Mother Nature placed in the path. At a clipped tempo, the rugged terrain should be eaten up in thirty minutes.

Pharaoh senses his master’s urgency and starts to pull on his bridle. Bruton leans over, speaking to the animal in a calm voice. Probably some Cookie gel, one seeking a little desert adventure. Bruton sets the horse to a faster pace again while reassuring the red stallion. Just the type of womanly behavior that truly irritates one, but keeping our dig keeps you in oats, better for us to deal with the damsel ourselves.

When Bruton makes the final turn along the gravel, he doesn’t sight a single man to take his horse, so he drops the reins patting Pharaoh’s lathered hindquarter. He heads toward tomb 22’s entrance; it’s up the side of a gritty embankment and is nothing grander than a hole carved into the face of a sharp cliff. His entire workforce is lodged at the opening of the tomb, lining the rough hewn steps down into blackness.

He chastises those huddled in the entrance out of his way with sharp words. A man looks up from under his turban as he digs beneath his fingernails with a knife; his brief respite is over as Lord Bruton snatches the knife, tosses it, burying it to the hilt in the sand. Bruton grabs a torch from another man and tosses it away from the opening. What have I said about open flames without stands? Use lanterns.

The back of Lord Bruton’s linen shirt is meshed with his skin, and sweat has settled into the seat of his trousers, but he has been in worse shape and in more dangerous situations than the chastisement of a ‘lady’ at his disheveled appearance.

Entering the tomb’s darkness, he doesn’t wait for his eyes to correct as he has dug around in blackened holes most of his life, and he is as familiar with this crypt as he is with his own childhood estate.

He takes to the declination quickly, devouring the six steps and making it through the first two gates. His camp light illuminates his downward thrust through the first steep-sloped corridor to another gate that lowers sixteen stairs meeting the flat landing. Now, he has no choice but to bend his six-foot-three inch frame because the height of the passage lessens and rushes forward at a sharp angle, thrusting him into the well-chamber, which symbolically connected Nun and the primordial ocean.

But Bruton is acquainted with the deep-pit set to swallow up desecrators. He forged a heavy wooden bridge across ‘The Hall of Hindering’ so that no one has dropped the thirty-two feet to injury or death. The sandy colored walls are decorated with golden stars bestrewn against the blazing Egyptian blue background.

Descend, descend, how deep the treasure dwells? he repeats out loud, a little ninny that his uncle often recited as they trudged through tombs.

Each individual scene painted on the walls is depicted with exquisite detail; Amenhotep presiding over Nekhbet, the black-headed vulture goddess of protection, the golden-shen sign of eternity gripped in her talons.

Bruton has walked this causeway daily since his arrival, but the weight of the solid mass of stone is still as alluring to him as his first expedition. How much farther to prison or prize or into the depths of Hades will one fall?

Blue and gold emblazon the walls with the pharaoh’s journey receiving life from Hathor; receiving life from the western goddess, Nut with Anubis and Hathor, and finally receiving life from Osiris, the images’ brick-red bodies dance before the pale-blue background, along with the litany of Gods that helped ferry him on his way.

Bruton’s fingertips latch onto and then hang off the lintel before he drops down into the next gateway which opens into the first chamber room. Its two columns stand alone in the center of the compartment on a north/south axis and the chisel marks tell the story of human toil still visible in the marred limestone. Exiting on the left changes his direction abruptly and plunges him downward and south at the same time, the steeply set stone stairs are sprinkled with sand, so familiar and so ancient at the same time, drawing one further into the secret bowels of granite.

Through the suffocating heat, he stops and takes a pull of water from his canteen, while reading the words carved into the immortal stone before him. You have doubtless come to embrace this woman? I will not allow you to embrace her. Perhaps you have come to rob her of speech? I will not allow you to render her silent. Perhaps you have come to do her harm? I will not allow you to injure her. Perhaps you have come to steal her away from me and take away her life? I will not allow you to separate her from me. I have called on magic to protect her against you. For that I have used the garlic you hate, and I have also taken the honey, so sweet for men and so bitter for the dead.

By the time he swallows the watery words he’s reached the antechamber, he peers through smoky torchlight and into the burial chamber. Four fellahin are milling about among the columns crowded with renditions of the demons that the soul would encounter during its passage through the shadows.

The workmen are in deep agitation, pacing about the small confines, and one is mopping his brow with the tail of his turban when the others look up to greet him, bowing.

Well then, where is she? he asks in harsh Arabic.

They turn toward the sunken area five-steps below, where once a great King was laid to rest, ‘The Hall in Which One Rests’ had been emptied of any of its glorious relics many years before Bonaparte stepped foot on Egyptian soil, even the pair of magical brick niches carved into the stone walls sit empty. All that remains are the crumbling, barely visible wall decorations, and the six columns with the incomplete Imydwat, ‘That which is in the Netherworld’. All else has been stolen away except the calcite block of the plinth, because it was too heavy to pilfer.

A wet sheen moistens his brow and dapples the open collar of his shirt. As he moves into the burial area, he wipes the sweat off his forehead. A tall female is curled on her side; a mass of unbound midnight colored hair is thrown across her face making her features unreadable.

The red granite plinth embellished with hieroglyphs that seem to jump out at him: Here passes the soul in two forms of flame; the Ka which never returns to our realm, and the Ba which might at will come and go as easily as I.

Lord Bruton immediately took charge of the situation, asking for water, and a blanket, as the lady was most unsuitably dressed. She is attired as many of the assembled workers in loose, khaki-colored trousers rolled up between ankle and knee. Dust and sand mar her pale ivory skin from her trousers to her sandals, made of beautiful, worked leather, finer sandals than most of these men will ever own.

His examination is interrupted by a worker clearing his throat while extending the requested items. The bearded man glances back at the jackal-headed priests painted on either side of the doorway, its guardian ears standing alert for four thousand years, as if they meant to intercept the fellahin from their exodus.

Bruton’s eyes stray back to the woman, lingering on her feet—her toes are painted an unusual shade of crimson—and became a focal point in the tomb which was washed in shades of beige. They remind him of drops of blood splattering a dusty roadway behind an injured soldier, but as he gathers the rough blanket in his fists to spread it over her a flush streams over his skin. The shifting breeze extinguishes three of the four torches.

The fellahin move to relight them, but he chastises them away. An open flame is a dangerous flame.

The workmen, being a superstitious lot, back away from the burial chamber into the antechamber grumbling in their native tongues, their chatter a little more annoying than braying desert goats chided away from tufts by herders.

He drops alongside the raised platform and feels for a pulse at the woman’s wrist. He moves it gingerly ascertaining any damage. Her pulse is accelerated but steady, and for the first time he makes out the woman’s features.

He almost pitches backward.

This is no ‘Cookies’ tourist turned away from home because she was unable to find a suitable match, he whispers to himself.

The woman is carved in human flesh like many an Egyptian Queen with a sharp chin, the aquiline nose of an aristocrat, a full, firm set of rosy lips, but it is her eyes that draw men’s full attention.

The instant Lord Bruton speaks, her eyes spring open. Blazing turquoise irises the size of marbles stare back at him. Her wing-swept eyebrows, which match her almost ebony hair, arch over eyes examining at him curiously. She shifts when he releases her wrist, and her white linen tunic, decorated with translucent seed pearls, comes to life by the silver necklace between its folds.

He tries to pull his eyes away, but he is tempted by the triple treasure of the antique Egyptian-style necklace layered between the crest of her breasts. Twin, heavily-tooled chains carry a silver rectangle amulet holding three sections of jewel-embellished patterns. The necklace include stones of lapis lazuli, as smooth as her flawless alabaster skin; carnelian as rich as her overgenerous mouth, and turquoise alive as the sparkle in her eyes.

Just as he reaches out to ascertain if it might match another amulet he helped recover in years past, she shifts onto her back placing her hand to her throat and blinks several times. The necklace disappears into the folds of the tunic’s collar as she struggles to her elbows.

Lord Bruton remains on his knees transfixed between her bewitching turquoise eyes and her neck. He hands her the thermos, which she takes, swallowing down long, unladylike gulps, never taking her eyes from his as the water runs into her neckline.

She returns the canteen to him and takes in the tomb walls, reaching out, as if to measure the height of the tomb before smiling grimly. Robert, we aren’t locked in here, are we?

He blinks, swallows but does not speak. Her unusual accent is not English. The intonation is cultured, deep and hypnotic. Her English is like waxy paper with grease stains on it. She’s an overly educated American girl. No one, other than an arrogant Yank, someone not right in the mind would leave a woman like this alone in the desert.

Miss, you have me at a disadvantage. A smile forms at the corners of his mouth. If we had met in the past, I would certainly remember our acquaintance.

She wrinkled up her pert nose before saying, I’ve been looking for ... She brought a fisted hand to her temple.

What exactly have you been looking for? He fished in his pocket for a cigar which he chomped into without lighting.

Footfalls echo behind them and Bruton turns to see an unfamiliar site officer approaching.

The woman points at the newcomer. He locked me in here.

Who in bloody hell are you? Bruton asks the man.

The man quickly bows. I came for the lady. He straightens his ill-fitting blue uniform coat before repositioning his black fez.

Bruton looks back at the woman, who is scuttling away on her elbows, panicked. She teeters off the bier, and as she wilts toward the ground Bruton leans over to catch her.

Her lashes flutter briefly before brushing her high cheek bones and she grabs a fistful of his sweaty shirt, yanking on him in desperation. Don’t leave me, she begs.

Lord Bruton catches her by her neck just as her head collides with the stone floor.

3

MYSTERIOUS APPEARANCE

How do you know her? Lord Bruton barked over his shoulder at the uniformed man trailing him as he carries the woman out of the tomb.

She is lost, sir. I will escort her back.

Beshwani and Hassan arrive just as Bruton deposits the woman on the carpeted floor of his tent. Dr. Beshwani’s fingertips brush her pulse at her throat while listening as Bruton explains what transpired.

The uniformed officer is standing at the loose flap of the tent, dancing between feet.

What is your name, sir? Bruton barks even as his gaze is locked on the young woman.

After his hasty examination of limbs, Dr. Beshwani frowns and looks up drawing Bruton’s attention to his face. She should be moved into town.

Not the hospital, certainly. Bruton frowns.

No, to the sisters at St. Mary’s, the abbey’s environment will be more agreeable than Al-Gurna. Beshwani grumbles, The sick wards boast a continuous strain of dysentery.

Yes of course, the young woman can remain with the sisters until they ascertain the whereabouts of her companions, without adding the danger of exposing her to other ailments. Bruton glances to where the uniformed man had been standing and then turns his glare on Hassan. Where did the chap go?

Hassan shrugs before informing them that there have been no tour groups in the valley for several days. He helps them settle the young woman into the back of a wagon. Both Bruton and Beshwani consider that new information along with the disappearance of the officer, as they are pulled by donkey-cart across the desert. By the time they are being barged across the river into town, their sparse conversation indicates that her appearance is circumspect to both of them.

Beshwani takes the unconscious woman’s pulse again as he speaks absentmindedly, She must be some scruffy old American industrialist’s wife.

Perhaps his second wife, younger and more independent than any young woman should be, Bruton grumbles in reply.

Beshwani picks up her lax hand and a crumpled wad of paper drops to the wood.

Bruton picks it up and opens it, spreading the wrinkled page over his knee. He looks up at Beshwani and frowns.

The careening clatter of the abbey gate made them drop their exchange, and Bruton neatly refolds the page and places it in the inside pocket of his bush jacket. The screeching metal doesn’t bring the young woman back to consciousness. Bruton asks Beshwani what sort of injury could allow her to remain comatose, while he deposits her in a hastily made-up cell.

While the abbess get the woman settled, Bruton and Beshwani stand in the breezeway, neither speaking of the situation aloud until Bruton breaks the stalemate. Women do not miraculously appear.

Beshwani’s set features communicated his own confusion as they paced back and forth in the cobbled exterior corridor.

When they reentered the cell the woman startled awake.

Her eyes dart around the room, taking in the plaster walls painted in a soft linen shade and focusing on the one wall that has three niches flanked with Corinthian columns. Each recess is adorned with a beautiful vine motif, while the archivolt was constructed by a series of shells. A cross painted in shades of gold stands sentinel over each alcove, and a braided motif, in Pompeian-red runs down them in supplication. The small oratory windows allow for a breeze.

The room feels serene; nothing like any cell either Bruton or Beshwani had ever been locked in.

She catches Bruton’s eye with a weak smile, toying with the fasteners of her shirtwaist. His eyes wander up the length of the blouse to where you can still make out the faint glow of silver.

Bruton abruptly glances away and pulls a cigar out of his breast pocket and rolls it between his hands impatiently, as Dr. Beshwani takes her pulse. Abbess Agnes gazes among the group with wry eyes, waiting for someone to say something that might shed light on the entire charade. Dr. Beshwani sits on the side of the young woman’s bed. Well, he said as he patted her hand reassuringly.

The Miss stares back at him before saying, Well, what?

I am Dr. Beshwani. He clears his throat. Would you be able to tell us who you are?

She gives a long blink in response. I thought you’d tell me. She rubs her temples and extends a hand indicating that they should wait for her to think. "I’m Marguerite. I came to Egypt to see Robert. Can’t he

Reviews for To Breathe the Breath of Isis

[killianmcrae · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A solid 4.5 stars on this imaginative and captivating work.As followers of my reviews will note, I have a soft spot for books that mash up genres. And when history is added to the mix? It's like birthday cake and ice cream and coffee all in one.The recipe for "To Breathe the Breath of Isis" would include the following: mythology, history, love, adventure, romance, time travel, destined souls, and breath-taking landscapes.The story opens in pre-WWI Egypt. British noble, Lord Bruton is a passionate Egyptologist in search of the tomb of legendary Queen Tiye of the 18th dynasty. While discovering several artifacts and sites linked with the Queen, true traces of her existence seem to escape him. In the midst of his projects, a mysterious woman is discovered passed out amongst the excavations. Marguerite is more than just beautiful face which invites the desire of all who behold her, however, she's intriguing. She refuses to conform to any of the expectations Bruton holds for the ways and manners of a proper lady, and despite his initial displeasure with that fact, the mystery of exactly how she came to be in the midst of Egypt without a clue of how she got there, for whom or what she came, or of any idea who she even is beyond her name, ignites in Bruton a fascination and preoccupation with the American. As bits of Marguerite's past dot the perimeters of her memories, it becomes painfully clear that Bruton and she share a deep connection, one tied to the legend of Queen Tiye herself, and harbored in the curse of a beautiful silver necklace that has found its way through time from the Pharaoh's favorite wife across thousands of years to Marguerite. No sooner have the couple come to accept their fate to be lovers, than the modern world pulls Marguerite back into its clutches, sending Bruton on a race against and with time to rescue her from peril.There's just so much good going on with this story, that it was a delightful, refreshing breath of fresh air (no pun intended) to read. There is a driving romance which underwrites the capital in this book, but there's plenty of adventure and intrigue as well that one never feels, as is so often the case in romance, that the only purpose of the story is to get the hero and the heroine to hook up. [Don't be misled by this statement, however. There are plenty of swoon-worthy passages and for the reader inclined to fall in love with fictional heroes, Bruton will seduce your senses just as he does Marguerite's.] It was a nice turn of pace to read a book which was Egyptian-centered, and yet didn't fall into the trap of centering on the more famous of the Egyptian woman: Cleopatra or Nefertiti (and this from an author whose own book does fall into that trap). The authoress shows a great deal of respect and craftsmanship in the development of Bruton and Marguerite's characters and their love, making them earn their happiness after many trials and tribulations. And whilst I do not wish to give away too much, there is a very clever, albeit brief epilogue told from the point of view of the necklace which seals up the overarching story line nicely. I generally don't care for the use of time travel as a device in most books, but it worked well in this one as there was no overreaching attempt by the author to pound the reader over the head with the whys and the hows.There were a few very small issues I did have, and as I promised an honest review, I would be remiss if I did not mention them. Firstly, while Ms. Marx develops the setting of 1910s Egypt very well, some of the archaeological or Arab terms used in the text may slip by or slow down readers not familiar with the region or the field of study. It should not be a hindrance, however, as one soon learns from the story painted around such terms, their meaning. One small thing I did find myself taking some issue with was a slight undercurrent of orientalism that crept into the plot at certain points. In the early passages where I felt this, I dismissed it as an accurate viewpoint of Europeans concerning the Islamic world in this era. However, later when the setting shifted to Turkey during the Young Turk era, and with Marguerite having recovered her faculties, I did find it a bit overdone. As a student of Ottoman history, I also recognized a few historical inaccuracies when the story reached that point (i.e. a male doctor in the Harem, Marguerite being arranged to marry the Sultan's son, though the sultanate did the require a legal marriage to legitimize the offspring or physical relationship between a master i.e. sultan or prince with a slave or captive), but I doubt those not as intimate as I with the history of Turkey will take an particular notice of these.Over all, an excellent cross-genre adventure/romance, and one that's sure to keep readers on the edge of their seat up to the end.