“In a tomb in Egypt, a door was found hidden behind the sarcophagus. The cat carved on it is standing upright like a person. In her left hand she holds the crescent moon, in her right she holds the sun. She is wearing a tear-shaped pendant.”
“A pendant?” Her heart thundered.
“An amulet. Surely it symbolized some power.”
Melissa waited, afraid to speak.
“There are tales of an amulet,” Olive said. “An emerald amulet with the powers of Bast.”
“Do you mean magical powers? What—what kind of powers would such a thing have?”
“I have found several mentions of the pendant in works on ancient Egypt, but they do not describe the powers.” Olive seemed to take the amulet very seriously. “The emerald is tear-shaped, and its setting is formed of two gold cats, their paws joined to protect it.”
“I suppose it is in a museum?”
“Oh, no. It has never been found. And there seem to be no other really good pictures. I suppose if it really does exist, it lies buried in some undiscovered tomb.”
Melissa studied Olive. “In the tomb where that pendant is shown in the carving—has anyone searched for it there?”
Olive smiled. “The archaeologist writes that behind that door is a solid clay wall. I have wondered, if one dug there…” She shook her head. “I’m sure others have thought of that. I’m sure the archaeologist himself must have dug into that wall, though his published work doesn’t mention it.” She poured more tea, filling their cups. “There is a door in a Celtic grave which shows an amulet around the neck of a cat, though not such a clear image. All that remains of that door is a fragment, a piece of dark oak bearing the marks of a hinge, and the forequarters of the cat.
“And there is said to be such a door in Italy, where a cat wears a jewel around its neck, but I have found no good reference. But that’s intriguing because—do you know about the cats of Italy, the Coliseum cats? Hundreds of cats living there in that magnificent ruin…”
There was no need to answer her, Melissa need only listen, Olive was completely engrossed.
“Hundreds of cats. And there’s a strange myth in Italy that intrigues me, though I don’t know how they could be connected. It is said that every now and then a stranger appears in Rome without money or identification—no passport, nothing. A stranger who is confused by the city and its traffic—innocent, like a child.
“He will be around the city for a few days then disappear. No one knows where such people go, or where they came from.” Olive picked up the book, wrapping it in brown paper. Melissa’s fists were clenched in her lap, her nails biting into her palms.
Chapter 46
Three hundred cats roamed within the fenced, wire-roofed compound in the center of the Lillith Ranch. Within the two-acre enclosure cats hunted through the high grass, played, slept, fought, and bred. Some had marked off territories and defended them. Beyond the cat compound and separated from it by low hills stood the barracks housing the human refugees from San Francisco’s streets. The buildings crested the far side of the hill, and included besides the barracks a mess hall, recreation buildings, a gym, stables, tack rooms, and weapons rooms. There was a riding ring large enough to accommodate sword training and mock battles. The human trainees were encouraged to handle the horses under supervision, but they were not encouraged to visit the cat compound.
Some of the cats were strays. Some had been stolen from the yards and gardens of San Francisco’s residential areas; some came from animal pounds. All were Catswold, carefully selected; one could tell by the eyes, by the unusually long ears, by something singularly unsettling in the expression. Vrech had not liked collecting them.
The toughest, most adaptable cats among the group did not bother to hunt, but sprawled arrogantly in the hot California sunshine, disdainful of hunting such easy game as the white mice freed daily into the enclosure for their pleasure. Instinctively they waited for normalcy to return to their lives, for times to fall again into the lean pattern of precarious survival they had learned in San Francisco’s alleys. Here, the effort to hunt was wasted; here food was brought twice daily.
Some of the cats, feeling too crowded, skulked along the fence or climbed irritably up and down the oak trees that had been pruned to stubs to allow for the wire mesh roof; they clawed at the mesh, staring through to freedom. The more dependent cats simply gorged on the white mice, which hardly knew how to escape a cat’s claws.
The area was relatively safe from idle discovery. It was protected by miles of fenced grassland owned by the Lillith Ranch, and the fences were spell-cast to discourage intruders. Small boys with twenty-two’s would turn away from it white with fear, not knowing what they were afraid of. And of course the gates were spell-locked.
