Great-uncle Sisyphus and Great-aunt Iphigenia were anxious to go ashore, to visit the famous Winter Palace Hotel, where they confidently expected to find many old friends and colleagues, and to collect mail that had arrived from England.
“Would you care to come, Hattie? Amal?”
Hattie would indeed. Amal followed.
Omar Shaydi and the Ravens went off on business connected with the acquisition of mummies. Great-uncle Sisyphus, Great-aunt Iphigenia, Hattie and Amal crossed the wide promenade that edged the river, and walked up an imposing double flight of marble steps to the hotel. Even before they reached the top, people sitting at tables on a wide, shaded terrace were looking, staring, and rising to their feet in surprise and delight.
“Sisyphus! Good heavens, it can’t be! Sisyphus Lambton, you old warhorse!”
“Iphigenia! My dear! How wonderful to see you here!”
“Good lord, it’s the Lambtons! Now what brings you to Luxor?”
In seconds, they were surrounded. Everyone seemed to know Great-uncle Sisyphus and Great-aunt Iphigenia, Hattie thought, and appeared delighted to welcome them. They were also interested in Hattie, and in Amal. “And who are these charming young ladies?”
They toured the various tables, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, introducing Hattie and Amal. They finally settled at a table with a large group of friends, catching up on news, listening to what all their friends were doing in Luxor, but not, Hattie noticed, disclosing exactly what they were here for themselves.
And they were not the only ones keeping their business secret. Hattie observed, as she listened and watched, that others were being cautious about discussing their affairs. There was, at times, an air of secrecy about. She heard whispers and half-smothered hints.
“And, my dear, I had quite set my heart on taking home a mummy or two, a little souvenir, you know . . .”
“Things have changed.”
“Too annoying, these new laws.”
“Where will our museums get their exhibits, if we cannot –”
“How will we learn about the past?”
“The antiquities officials are being very vigilant, it seems.”
Words hung in the air. There was a general air of dissatisfaction. It was not like the old days, it seemed, not at all.
A tall man joined their group, and Hattie and Amal stood up politely to offer him their couch. He smiled at them in thanks, and turned to Great-uncle Sisyphus. “So what brings you here, Sisyphus? We haven’t seen you in Egypt in years!”
“No, you have not. We simply thought it more than time to visit again. And it was certainly time Hattie saw Egypt again. Her education, you know . . .” replied Great-uncle Sisyphus evasively
Eyes swung to Hattie, and she blushed.
A lady leaned discreetly towards Great-aunt Iphigenia. “Your nephew and his wife’s girl, of course? Such a tragedy! Such a mystery! There was never any more news?”
“None, sadly,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. “But we are so pleased to have Hattie with us.” She raised her voice a little. “Hattie, Amal, we will be here for some time, I think. Would you care to go and look at the gardens?”
Amal looked up quickly. “There is a bookshop, I believe. Could I go and look at that?”
“Of course, my dear.”
“I would like to see the gardens,” said Hattie.
“Perhaps I could show you where they are?” A thin man, deeply suntanned, rose to his feet.
“Ah, Gustav. How kind.” Great-aunt Iphigenia smiled at him. “Hattie, this is Professor Helman. He is the curator of a wonderful museum in London. It specialises in ancient Egyptian jewellery.”
That was interesting. Hattie thought of the necklace she wore as part of her Egyptian costume. Perhaps Professor Helman would know something about it. Hattie bobbed a curtsey and followed Professor Helman through the marble-floored lobby of the hotel to another terrace, with steps leading down to a lushly green garden. There were lawns and small pavilions covered in scrambling creepers, and fountains splashing water into small pools. Peacocks strolled sedately through the greenery.
“It’s beautiful!” Hattie said. “Can we go down into it?”
“Certainly.”
Professor Helman looked at Hattie closely as they strolled along the paths. “I knew your parents,” he said. “They were my good friends. You have a look of your mother.”
“Do I? I don’t remember them at all,” Hattie said quietly. “I wish I did. I only remember being at Howling Hall. Until I went away to school, that is.”
“And now you are with Sisyphus and Iphigenia,” said Professor Helman. “How are you liking Crumblin Castle?”
“You know it?” asked Hattie.
“I have stayed there many times.”
“Well, it’s cold, and there is fog and mist that never seems to lift most days, as you would know, and it is falling down in places, but –”
“But?”
“I love it!” Hattie burst out. “I just love it! I do so hope I can stay there forever!”
Professor Helman looked down at her. “Is there some reason why you might not?”
Hattie closed her mouth quickly. “Well – no – not at all, I suppose. Not unless I go away to school again. I mean, if I have to go away to school.” Immediately, she was angry with herself. She tried so hard not to do or say anything that might result in her being sent away to school. Why had she even raised the idea? She hadn’t meant to!
She was silent for a while. Professor Helman attempted another topic of conversation. “And are you enjoying Egypt?” he asked.
“Yes, indeed!” said Hattie. She told him about the Apis bulls, and the temples, and the days on the river. The birds and the crocodiles.
“And the tombs?” said Professor Helman. “You haven’t mentioned the tombs. Have you seen some interesting ones?”
Tombs. Hattie bit her lip. Tombs were the only things she wasn’t able to be enthusiastic about. “I have seen – lots of tombs,” she admitted, with little enthusiasm.
“Hmm. Perhaps you don’t find them as interesting as temples?” suggested Professor Helman.
“Oh, it’s not that they’re not interesting! It’s – it’s just –” Hattie stopped. She couldn’t say any more. If she did, she thought desperately, she’d soon be saying far too much.
Professor Helman nodded, his eyes on her face. He walked on, saying nothing, but Hattie had the feeling he had understood more than she had meant him to. She found, however, rather to her surprise, that she didn’t really mind that. Professor Helman, she felt, was the kind of person you could tell things to. Perhaps, one day . . .
“We should go back to the terrace,” said Professor Helman. “The sun is beginning to go down. Your great-uncle and aunt will be looking for you.” He stopped and turned to face her. “I wonder if you would care to attend a rather special event in a few days, Hattie? The team I am working with and I are planning to unearth a cache of mummies of the kings and nobles who came immediately after the New Kingdom. They have been hidden for many years under the courtyard of a great temple on the west bank. We plan to raise them, and take them by boat to Cairo, to the museum. It will be the first time they have seen the light of day for hundreds and hundreds of years. We expect there may be fifty or more mummy cases. Would it interest you to see this?”
Fifty mummy cases! Hattie knew at once who would be immensely interested in that. It would make Great-aunt Iphigenia’s – and the Ravens’ – mouths water! But she knew there would be no chance at all of their acquiring any of these mummies.
“Can Great-aunt Iphigenia and Great-uncle Sisyphus come too?” she asked.
“But of course,” said Professor Helman.
They rejoined the group on the terrace. Amal had clearly had a successful time in the bookshop. There was a pile of new books on her knee. Before they left the hotel, Great-uncle Sisyphus remembered to ask for his mail, and he collected a large handful. He shuffled through them quickly, and held one
item out to Hattie.
“One for you, my dear.”
“For me?” Hattie could think of no one who would be writing to her. She opened the envelope. It was a postcard with a view of Ely. She turned it over. There were no words written on it, but Hattie knew at once who had sent it. On the back was one large paw print, and many smaller ones. Hattie laughed. Sekhmet and the kittens – of course! She felt happy they had remembered her.
Amal was looking at it. “Paw prints? Cats?”
“It’s from Sekhmet and the kittens,” explained Hattie. “They look after us at Crumblin Castle.”
“What do you mean, look after you?”
“They do the housework, the cooking.”
“Cats?”
“Yes,” said Hattie firmly. “Cats. They are – very special cats.”
There was a silence. “It is not scientific,” said Amal at last. “But, do you know – I do believe you.”
Great-uncle Sisyphus and Great-aunt Iphigenia spent the next few days showing Hattie all there was to see in Luxor. There was no shortage of sites to visit.
Luxor, then known as Thebes, Great-uncle Sisyphus observed, was the capital of the New Kingdom. “From 1570 to 1090 BC the power of Egypt was centred here. Such buildings! Such wealth! There is much to see!”
They visited the great temple of Amun in Luxor itself, wending their way through the village and mosque that had grown up inside its vast walls over the years. They gazed at colossal statues of the pharaoh Ramses II on its exterior walls and, once inside, encountered Ramses again, shown in carved reliefs on the walls depicting his great victories in battle.
They walked a mile-long avenue lined with ram-headed sphinxes – some intact, some damaged, many half-buried in sand – to reach an enormous complex of temples in the village of Karnak. Hattie tiptoed, feeling totally insignificant, through what seemed a forest of towering stone pillars, each with a papyrus-form capital, in the temple’s great hypostyle hall. It was how an ant might feel, she thought, as it crawled through the papyrus plants that grew by the river.
In the centre of the temple complex they came to a stretch of water, a sacred lake where the ancient priests had purified themselves before performing their rituals in the many shrines. Great-uncle Sisyphus pointed out a huge statue of a scarab beetle. “A manifestation of the god Khepri,” he said. “You’ve seen scarabs, dung beetles, in the fields, rolling balls of dung with their front legs? The Egyptians believed that, in the same way, Khepri pushed the sun across the sky every day.”
It was not all visits to temples. Amal insisted that Hattie must visit the shops and bazaars, too. “You need to send postcards home,” she declared. “To the kittens.” Amal liked animals. The kittens had caught her imagination. But in the shops and bazaars, the girls found much more than postcards. They found soft cushions and toys that Hattie knew the kittens would love. They found new gold rings for Sekhmet’s ears and nose. They found scarves embroidered with tiny, glinting mirrors, and tiny bells that would chime sweetly when kitten paws patted them. It took a large box to parcel up all that they found. They addressed the box to Crumblin Castle and took it to the Luxor post office, where they were promised it would be sent off at once.
It had taken several days to explore all that Luxor and Karnak had to offer. There was one special day when Great-aunt Iphigenia and Great-uncle Sisyphus took Hattie to visit the vast temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri. They had spoken to her gently the previous evening.
“We are not sure about this visit,” Great-aunt Iphigenia said. “It is, after all, the place where your parents disappeared. Perhaps you would prefer not to see it?”
Hattie had been thinking about this. She had no memories of her parents at all. If anything, she had discovered, she felt rather resentful towards them. What sort of parents, she wondered, could be so thoughtless as to simply disappear and leave their baby sitting alone outside a temple? Lambtons, she thought crossly, seemed very prone to carelessly disappearing, or being eaten by wild animals, or simply forgetting to come home. Hattie had no objection to visiting her namesake’s temple at all.
So they did. They stood before a series of limestone terraces with the temple buildings standing on them, merging into sheer cliffs. The sight clearly affected both Great-aunt Iphigenia and Great-uncle Sisyphus. “That’s where you were found, Hattie. No sign of your parents, or where they could have gone. Nothing.”
The guide that they had hired to conduct them through the temple was intrigued. “Gone? Without a trace?”
Great-uncle Sisyphus nodded. “It was very strange. Just – gone. We have no idea what happened.”
The guide gazed thoughtfully at the temple. “The Oasis of the Lost, perhaps,” he murmured.
“The Oasis of the Lost?” asked Hattie. “What is that?”
“A legend,” the guide said. “An oasis that travels. A place of the lost. It comes, and goes. The oasis appears, and it takes people. Then it goes, it wanders. It is very beautiful, it is said, but once you step onto it, it will never let you go. You must travel with it forever.” He glanced at his audience. Hattie was open-mouthed. Great-aunt Iphigenia and Great-uncle Sisyphus were glaring at him ferociously. The guide changed his tone abruptly. “It is just a story,” he said quickly. “Nothing. A legend. It does not really exist. Come, there is much to see here. The reliefs are very fine.”
They toured the reliefs on the walls, scenes of birds being hunted, scenes of an expedition that the Pharaoh Hatshepsut had sent to the far distant and mysterious land of Punt, many images of the Queen Pharaoh – most disfigured by her vengeful nephew when he finally became Pharaoh.
When they had finished, Great-uncle Sisyphus tipped the guide, who appeared relieved, having feared he had offended his clients. He pocketed his tip and silently vowed he would be very careful, in future, who he mentioned the legend of the Oasis of the Lost to. Most of his clients found it a fascinating story. He took himself off before his clients changed their minds.
“He didn’t upset you, Hattie?” Great-aunt Iphigenia enquired anxiously as they climbed back into their carriage.
“Upset me?”
“With that old story. The Oasis of the Lost. It is just a legend, a superstition.”
“No,” Hattie said. “He didn’t upset me at all.” But she did not forget the story. Suppose, just suppose, it were true. Suppose her parents had not just carelessly lost themselves. Suppose they had been taken. Spirited away. It made her feel somewhat better towards them. Just a little.
“Now,” Great-uncle Sisyphus said at breakfast the next day, “it is time to cross the river. To visit the western bank, the ancient necropolis of Thebes.”
Hattie knew very well that “necropolis” meant “city of the dead”. And that meant . . .
“Tombs?” she said.
“Many, many tombs,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus happily. “The Valley of the Kings. The Valley of the Queens. And the tombs of nobles and officials, too. We cannot hope to see them all, it would be the work of a lifetime. But there are several I am most anxious to visit.” He pulled a notebook from his pocket and consulted it. “The tomb of Ramses VI. The ceiling is unique. It features two images of the goddess Nut, stretched entirely across the whole ceiling, depicting the morning and evening sky. And the tomb of Queen Tawsert, one of the largest in the whole Valley of the Kings, built for a queen but finally used for a king, and therefore with two burial chambers. Most interesting!”
He looked up, his eyes gleaming. “And, of course, though I admit it will be difficult to access, the tomb of Tuthmosis III, possibly the most secret and almost unreachable tomb of the Valley. Steep stairs, passages at awkward angles, and a deep, hidden shaft to deter tomb robbers. And Hattie, on the walls, of great interest, a list of seven hundred gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt. Seven hundred! Imagine it!”
There was a pause.
“The walls,” said Hattie. “Will there be scenes carved and painted on them as well?”
“Most ass
uredly!” said Great-uncle Sisyphus with enthusiasm.
“Then, do you know,” Hattie said carefully, “perhaps I won’t come today. Perhaps I’ll just stay here.”
Everyone turned to look at her. Amal raised her eyebrows.
“Are you feeling quite well, Hattie dear?” enquired Great-aunt Iphigenia.
“Yes, yes, quite well. I just feel as if I should perhaps catch up on some reading,” Hattie faltered. “I’ve seen so much, in just a few days, I feel as if I need to have some – some background, you know, on all the things we’ve been looking at.”
“It would be a great pity for you to miss Ramses’ and Tuthmosis’ tombs,” tutted Great-uncle Sisyphus. “But never mind, we can always visit them again. When you’ve caught up on your reading, my dear. I quite understand. The experience can be rather overwhelming. Well, I will go and ask Omar Shaydi to make arrangements about donkeys.”
He and the Ravens left the room. Amal, with a backwards glance, followed them. Great-aunt Iphigenia stayed at the table.
“Hattie, my dear, may I ask – it isn’t that unfortunate business about jinns and afrits that has prevented you from visiting the tombs today, is it?”
Hattie looked up, surprised.
“I’m sure it’s not,” Great-aunt Iphigenia went on hurriedly. “You’re far too sensible to be bothered by silly superstitions like that. But I have noticed you seem, well, a little uncomfortable when we visit tombs . . .”
Hattie slumped in her chair. “No, no, of course it’s not that. I don’t believe in jinns and afrits and demons and evil spirits.”
“I thought not,” agreed Great-aunt Iphigenia. “But – what is it, then?”
Hattie considered for a moment. She would never have a better opportunity to express her worries to Great-aunt Iphigenia, she thought.
“Well,” she said hesitantly, “Great-aunt Iphigenia, have you ever wondered, thought about, what might happen to the souls of the ancient Egyptians when they died? If their bodies were destroyed, that is?”
Great-aunt Iphigenia raised her eyebrows.
The Mummy Smugglers of Crumblin Castle Page 16