side sewn with larger gold plates.
I realized that if I put on this mask and these gloves -- if I laid over me the blanket -- then I would be protected from the light if anyone opened the lid of the sarcophagus while I slept.
But it wasn't likely that anyone could get into the sarcophagus. And the doors of this L-shaped chamber were also covered with iron, and they too had their iron bolt.
Yet there was a charm to these mysterious objects. I liked to touch them, and I pictured myself wearing them as I slept. The mask reminded me of the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy.
All of these things suggested the burial of an ancient king.
I left these things a little reluctantly.
I came back out into the room, took off the garments I'd worn during my nights in the earth in Cairo, and put on fresh clothes. I felt rather absurd standing in this timeless place in a violet blue frock coat with pearl buttons and the usual lace shirt and diamond buckle satin shoes, but these were the only clothes I had. I tied back my hair in a black ribbon like any proper eighteenth-century gentleman and went in search of the master of the house.
Part VII Ancient Magic, Ancient Mysteries Chapter 2
2
Torches had been lighted throughout the house. Doors lay open. Windows were uncovered as they looked out over the firmament and the sea.
And as I left the barren little stairs that led down from my room, I realized that for the first time in my wandering I was truly in the safe refuge of an immortal being, furnished and stocked with all the things that an immortal being might want.
Magnificent Grecian urns stood on pedestals in the corridors, great bronze statues from the Orient in their various niches, exquisite plants bloomed at every window and terrace open to the sky. Gorgeous rugs from India, Persia, China covered the marble floors wherever I walked.
I came upon giant stuffed beasts mounted in lifelike attitudes -- the brown bear, the lion, the tiger, even the elephant standing in his own immense chamber, lizards as big as dragons, birds of prey clutching dried branches made to look like the limbs of real trees.
But the brilliantly colored murals covering every surface from floor to ceiling dominated all.
In one chamber was a dark vibrant painting of the sunburnt Arabian desert complete with an exquisitely detailed caravan of camels and turbaned merchants moving over the sand. In another room a jungle came to life around me, swarming with delicately rendered tropical blossoms, vines, carefully drawn leaves.
The perfection of the illusion startled me, enticed me, but the more I peered into the pictures the more I saw.
There were creatures everywhere in the texture of the jungle-insects, birds, worms in the soil-a million aspects of the scene that gave me the feeling, finally, that I had slipped out of time and space into something that was more than a painting. Yet it was all quite flat upon the wall.
I was getting dizzy. Everywhere I turned walls gave out on new vistas. I couldn't name some of the tints and hues I saw.
As for the style of all this painting, it baffled me as much as it delighted me. The technique seemed utterly realistic, using the classical proportions and skills that one sees in all the later Renaissance painters: da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, as well as the painters of more recent times, Wateau, Fragonard. The use of light was spectacular. Living creatures seemed to breathe as I looked on.
But the details. The details couldn't have been realistic or in proportion. There were simply too many monkeys in the jungle, too many bugs crawling on the leaves. There were thousands of tiny insects in one painting of a summer sky.
I came into a large gallery walled on either side by painted men and women staring at me, and I almost cried out. Figures from all ages these were -- bedouins, Egyptians, then Greeks and Romans, and knights in armor, and peasants and kings and queens. There were Renaissance people in doublets and leggings, the Sun King with his massive mane of curls, and finally the people of our own age.
But again, the details made me feel as if I were imagining them -- the droplets of water clinging to a cape, the cut on the side of a face, the spider half -- crushed beneath a polished leather boot.
I started to laugh. It wasn't funny. It