by Nancy Warren
My dad leaned forward and placed his hands palm to palm, a sure sign that he was about to launch into lecture mode. “Well, that’s a very astute question, Lucy. What’s exciting about this find is that there are a number of skeletons in the tomb, and they all appear to have died at the same time.”
I swallowed. “You mean there was some kind of epidemic that killed a bunch of people at once?” Please, let it be that.
Dad shook his head. “This was a lesser wife’s tomb, but obviously she was a favorite of the pharaoh, based on the elaborate burial. We believe there were a number of retainer sacrifices. These would be people the young queen believed she’d need to serve her in the afterlife. Her servants. They may have volunteered to be sacrificed in order to continue to serve her in eternity, or they may not have been given the choice. It’s very difficult to say.”
I had to sit down. “How, um, were they killed?”
“There was no trauma to the head or bodies that we’ve been able to find. We suspect they were poisoned, though they could also have been strangled. We hope to do extensive testing to find out.” He winked at me. “But my money’s on poison.”
I felt suddenly hot and claustrophobic. I was remembering my nightmares, back when I’d visited them on site. So, it seemed, did Dad. “Are you okay, honey? You’ve gone pale. You used to look like that in Egypt after you had a nightmare. Gosh, you used to have some powerful nightmares when you came to the dig site. Remember?”
I was not likely to forget. Even now I recalled the feelings of terror that had me sitting up in bed and yelling.
“She was always a sensitive child,” Mom added. “Knowing she was surrounded by ancient graves, gave her ideas.”
In my dreams, I’d seen the sarcophagi, the burial chambers, but from the inside. Thinking of the girl in the mirror, I had to ask, “Were there any young women sacrificed with the queen?”
“Definitely. The average age of the skeletons is twenty years old and there are more females than males in this particular tomb.”
Twenty years old was about the age of the girl in the mirror. I shuddered. “Are there any curses associated with this particular queen? And her burial?”
Dad and Mom exchanged a glance, then Dad said, “There are always curses. Things like, ‘If anyone disturbs this tomb, they will die a violent death,’ that kind of thing. But I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary. Do you, honey?”
Mom did the face-scrunching, deep thinking again. “This young queen was particularly superstitious. She kept her own priestess nearby, a young girl who could interpret her dreams and was said to be able to foretell the future.”
“What was her name?” I tried to be cool, but my voice came out wobbly.
Dad shook his head at me. “Lucy, honey, there must be twenty mummies in there. I can’t remember all their names. We’ve barely started cataloguing the find.”
“Meritamun,” Mom said. “She was the Daughter of Amenemhat, the High Priest of Amun. It would have been a great honor for her to join the royal household. No doubt the high priest gave her some tips on interpreting dreams and giving the kind of vague prophecies that today’s fortune tellers still rely on.” She mimed holding a crystal ball and put on a deep voice. “You will meet a tall, handsome stranger. You will go on a journey.” She laughed and shook her head. “People were as gullible then as they are now.”
Gran had said that Mom had magic in her and refused to face it. I remembered her saying that it made my mother vulnerable to dark forces who might use her latent powers against her. Had that happened in Egypt?
Something had, and the upshot seemed to be that I was now in possession of a cursed mirror. The Meritamun that I’d met wasn’t predicting I’d meet a tall, handsome stranger, or that I’d go on a journey. I could have coped with either of those prophesies, no problem. Unfortunately, she predicted great danger. And, gullible or not, I believed her.
My parents were tired and jetlagged, so we decided to go to the local pub for Sunday roast. It would be a late lunch and early dinner. I could probably have scratched together a simple supper, but I didn’t want them bumping into Gran. Until I’d warned my undead grandmother that her non-believing daughter was in the house, I needed to physically keep them apart.
I sent Rafe a text, letting him know they were with me and asking him to keep Gran out of sight. I was certain that one day, Mom would find out that her mom was a vampire, but she was too fragile right now. Having been bewitched and used as a human mule to transport a cursed mirror, I didn’t think Mom was ready for more shocks.
The Bishop’s Mitre was at the top of Harrington Street, across from the grocer, and served proper British pub food. Steak and kidney pie, fish and chips, macaroni and cheese, sausages and mash, and a few dishes for the vegetarians. They also did a roast Sunday lunch, one of my favorite British traditions. On Sundays the pub offered roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, with roast potatoes and veg, or roast pork, or chicken. There was a nut roast for the vegetarians.
My folks bundled up again in their warm coats. I was worried about being too warm in my thick sweater, so swapped it for a gorgeous red shawl, hand-knit by a former policeman, now vampire, named Theodore. I wore it with my best jeans and a simple white shirt.
The pub was busy with family lunch parties, and groups of friends. I’d lived in the neighborhood long enough, now, that I recognized a few people. There was Bessie Yang, a yoga teacher, and her friend, Dr. Amanda Silvester. I made sure to say hello, and introduce my parents, thinking Mom might be more receptive to seeing a doctor she’d met socially.
We settled in a quiet booth and my dad went up to the bar to deliver our orders. Red wine for me, white for Mom, and a British beer for him.
Over lunch, we caught up. They asked me for my news from home, by which they meant Boston, and I did the same. Since our circles weren’t that similar,, we had different gossip to share, though it was all second hand, as none of us had been back home for months.
“Any news of Todd?” Mom asked at last. Todd had been my boyfriend for two years, and I think my parents had assumed, rather than hoped, that I’d marry him. But Todd had turned out to be cheating on me with a woman he worked with. I’d walked in on them, in one of those clichés of modern relationships that you think will never happen to you, until it does. My best friend, Jennifer, and I had rechristened him The Toad after that.
“Jennifer said the woman he was cheating on me with, dumped him. He sent me a couple of emails, but I deleted them.”
My dad said, heartily, “Better to have loved and lost, and all that.”
“Todd was looking for an old hoodie he couldn’t find.” I’d have liked to think he’d wanted me back, just so I could kick him to the curb. Yep, I’d spent two years of my life, that I was never getting back, with a man like that.
“Plenty of fish in the sea,” my dad said, moving on to the next platitude on his list.
“Really, Jack,” Mom said. “You have no idea what it’s like for these young people today. It’s all ‘swipe left, swipe right.’ How do they ever find love?”
“Come to Egypt,” was Dad’s next bright idea. “There’s barely ever working Internet, and more young men than you can shake a stick at.”
“The only problem is, they’re all archaeologists.” I was teasing, but not really. I loved my parents, but I couldn’t live that life.
After dinner, we’d all succumbed to dessert. Sticky toffee pudding for me, bread and butter pudding for my mom, and my dad, no sweet tooth, ordered cheese and biscuits and another beer.
We were home by seven and caught up on the news on TV. By nine they were both yawning.
Since I’d arrived in Oxford, I’d been sleeping in the guest room, where I’d always slept when I visited Gran. Even though her room was larger, I hadn't moved in there. It seemed wrong when she was still around, not that she used the room. Gran lived in a gorgeous subterranean warren with a nest of local vampires. However, since it was located right underneath
Cardinal Woolsey’s, I saw her frequently. I’d been happy to stay in my old room, and so I prepared Gran’s room for Mom and Dad.
I wasn't certain if Mom would be able to sleep in her own recently-deceased mother's room, but she said it would comfort her. So, I put fresh sheets on the bed and found some clean towels and wished them a good night. It wasn't long before all sounds of activity ceased. I waited half an hour and then eased open the door and peeked in. They were both sound asleep.
I went back into my own bedroom and, unfortunately, the mirror was still sitting on the bedside table, exactly where I’d put it. I hadn’t experienced some sort of temporary insanity.
I didn't want to pick it up with my bare hands, not after the way it had gripped me before, and refused to let go. I slipped on a pair of gloves before replacing the mirror into the leather pouch Mom had transported it in, and then into one of Gran’s cloth knitting bags. Then I texted Rafe that I urgently needed to see him.
Rafe Crosyer was a well-respected expert in antiquarian books. He was a fellow of Cardinal College and a consultant to libraries and book collectors all over the world. He was also a vampire.
I didn't want him coming upstairs and I didn't want all the other vampires to know what had happened, so I asked him to meet me downstairs in the shop. He arrived minutes after I texted him. How he travelled so fast, when his home was several miles away, was a mystery I preferred not to probe. I let him in and took him straight into the back room where we held the knitting circle. I switched on the light and we settled into two of the chairs, facing each other.
As always, when I was around Rafe, I felt hot and cold at the same time. He was quite swoon-worthy to look at, like one of those dark, dangerous heroes the Brontë sisters wrote about. Heathcliff could have been modelled on him. In fact, perhaps he was.
Vampires don't blink as often as the rest of us, so it was slightly unnerving the intent way he stared at me. It made me fidget and wish I’d done a better job of combing my hair, or making sure my clothes were neat and that I’d bothered to freshen my makeup.
He, on the other hand, always looked perfect. His black wool trousers seemed perfectly creased, as though he’d never sat down in them, his sweaters, of the finest cashmere, never seemed to pill like everybody else's did and his black hair was always well groomed. His gray-blue eyes studied me. "Something's happened to upset you."
The understatement of the year.
"Like I said in my text, my parents arrived, today."
He nodded. "And you're afraid that Agnes will show herself."
Right now, that was the least of my problems, although it was a concern. "Mom is still grieving her loss; I don't think it would be good for either of them to see each other, not quite yet."
"I agree with you. Agnes is still transitioning, and it's hard for her with so many loved ones around. I wish we could convince her to move away for a while, but she's not ready."
We’d had this conversation before. I wanted to do the right thing for Gran, but the truth was, I still needed her. Before she was turned into a vampire, she’d been a witch and she was the person I most relied on to teach me witching skills. She was also always handy with good advice on running the knitting shop. “I'm not ready, either."
"I know. Shall I see if I can find an excuse to send her away, just for a few days? Until your parents are gone?"
"Do you think she'll go?"
He considered the question. We both knew my grandmother was as stubborn dead as she had been alive. Maybe more so. "I'll get Sylvia to explain to her why a trip would be best, and then I think she'll go. You can add your encouragement at the knitting club meeting tomorrow night." Sylvia was Gran’s best friend, and the person who’d turned her into a vampire. That made her Gran’s maker, I think is the term. It meant they were strongly bonded and Gran pretty much did whatever Sylvia told her to do.
I liked Sylvia. She was a glamorous, silver-haired former film and stage star, but her diva qualities hadn’t died with her. She could be bossy, unreasonable, and vain. Since she had no reflection, I was pretty sure she used Gran as her personal makeup artist.
And thinking of mirrors… "That's not all that's bothering me." I picked up the bag and, using my still-gloved hand, pulled out the mirror and showed it to Rafe. "Do you have any idea what this is?"
He was accustomed to handling rare books with linen gloves, so he didn't seem particularly surprised to find me doing something similar. He pulled a pair of cloth gloves out of his pocket and put them on. He reached out his hands. "May I?"
I didn't imagine a death curse could do much damage to someone who was already dead, so I let him take the mirror from me. Naturally, Rafe understood hieroglyphics and, much more fluently than I had done, he read the protection spell aloud.
I flinched when his deep voice had recited the last of the protection spell. I could feel the chair back pressing against my spine and my heart began to pound.
But nothing happened. No blue light, no three-thousand-year-old woman warning of evil and destruction on its way. It seemed that special treatment had been just for me.
Chapter 4
"What can you tell me about it?" I asked him, as he sat, studying the mirror.
He answered my question with a question of his own. "Where did you get this?"
I huffed in irritation. "I asked you first."
He shook his head at my childishness, as he often did, but he also answered my question. "It's Egyptian, obviously, I'm guessing between 1400 and 1700 BCE. It's gold and obsidian. The surface of the mirror looks like bronze. Someone highborn or royal used it and they were someone very special, as it's been inscribed with a protection spell." He glanced at me. "Your parents would be the ones to tell you all about this. They’re the experts."
I told him the whole story, then, relieved to be able to share the freakish experience. I started with the moment my mother arrived, looking as though she'd been drinking, through me saying the spell out loud, exactly as he had, while holding the mirror, and everything that happened to me after I did. He made me repeat the entire story a second time. "And this woman spoke to you. In your own language."
"Yes. I felt like Luke Skywalker when Princess Leia pops out of that robot and asks for his help."
Rafe stared at me blankly. Honestly, he could tell in an instant that an artefact was three thousand years old and Egyptian, but recent cultural events escaped him. I shook my head. "Star Wars."
"Popular culture bores me," he said.
One day, I was determined to show him what he was missing. But not today. "Why would me reciting a protection incantation cause this woman to tell me I'm in terrible danger? Isn’t the whole point of a protection spell to save you from danger?"
"I admit that has me in a puzzle, too."
"And why me? This thing has been buried in sand, presumably for a very long time, why would my mother come across it and suddenly feel compelled to bring it to me?"
"Another excellent question." He looked at the mirror again. “She said it caught her eye as it was so shiny.”
“That’s right.”
“I wonder if she didn’t actually dig it up, but it was placed there for her to find.”
“You just found a way to make this worse. You’re saying she might have been deliberately targeted?”
“I’m only speculating. I have no idea.”
I asked him the one that was really bothering me. "Do you think I'm in danger?"
His dark, calm eyes looked directly into mine. "I think you'd be very foolish not to take the warning seriously."
So not what I was hoping he'd say.
"As I said, your parents are the experts in that area. Can’t you show it to them?"
How was I going to show it to them, without causing a whole lot of problems? If Mom even remembered she’d brought the mirror with her, which I doubted, my dad would freak out. If Mom didn't remember, then they were both going to wonder how I had come into possession of such a rare thing. When I ex
plained it to him, Rafe shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll do some research and see what I can find out.”
“Great. And you’ll get Sylvia to take Gran away for a few days?”
“Yes. At least I can take that worry off your shoulders.” He looked at me as though he’d like to take more of them.
In the end, I snapped a picture of the mirror with my phone and decided to show it to my dad in the morning and see what he had to say.
The next morning my parents woke up rested and full of plans. My dad was heading out to a meeting of Egyptologists at his old college while my mom went to hers to see about recruiting some grad students.
Fortunately, Mom left first, and, when I had my dad to myself, I asked, "Can you tell very much about an artefact from a picture?"
"I can do a better job with the actual, physical object, but you can tell quite a bit from a good photograph. Why do you ask?"
I told him that a friend had inherited this mirror and didn't know what to do with it. And then I showed him the picture on my phone.
My dad studied the picture carefully and kept increasing the size of the photograph and looking at small details of the mirror. He was a very careful researcher. Finally, he looked up. "Where did your friend get this?"
Provenance is a big deal when you deal in antiquities. Rafe and I had already made up a story that seemed plausible. "My friend’s great-great-grandfather bought it in Cairo in the late 1800s. It’s been in her family ever since.”
He shook his head, looking annoyed. "So many treasures were pillaged in that time. It's shameful. Well, you can tell your friend that, assuming this is genuine, it’s an extremely well-preserved lady’s mirror from the Middle Kingdom. I’d say this mirror is from around 1500 BCE."
"Wow. Thanks."
He sat back. "If this is genuine, it should really be in a museum. If your friend wants to donate the mirror, I could arrange it, and a plaque, acknowledging the gift, would be displayed alongside the artefact."