Hattie hurried on. “Great-uncle Sisyphus says that they needed their bodies to continue existing if they were to live on in the afterlife. And he says if the body was destroyed, they believed they would be condemned to darkness, forever. And that made me wonder if, well – if unwrapping mummies, destroying them, you know, was perhaps sending souls into darkness.”
“I see. Yes,” Great-aunt Iphigenia said slowly. “I am well aware of those beliefs, Hattie. I suppose that is why you asked if we could take the unwrapped mummies back to Crumblin Castle with us?”
Hattie nodded.
“But when Sisyphus told you about those beliefs, I’m sure he also explained that they are only superstition. The ancient Egyptians believed in magic, and curses and spells. Jinns and afrits, too. Nothing that scientists, like us, can believe in or accept.” She watched Hattie closely. “I’m sure you must agree?”
“Yes, of course,” Hattie said. “Of course I agree. I just wondered a little, you know. If a soul might be lost . . .” She waited apprehensively for the reply.
“And that has been worrying you? My dear!” Great-aunt Iphigenia looked quite horrified. “I’m very sorry if this has been concerning you. No, no, these are only stories, legends – beliefs that have no relevance today. Modern Egyptian girls like Amal do not believe in them.”
But they do, Hattie thought.
“No, you must not worry about this for a second. Not a second. There! Are you quite comfortable now?” Great-aunt Iphigenia beamed at Hattie confidently.
Hattie hesitated, then nodded. She might have known it would be of no use.
“Then you enjoy your morning of rest and reading. We will be back in time for a late lunch; it gets far too hot in the valleys to spend the whole day there. And tomorrow perhaps you’ll feel able to accompany us?”
“Tomorrow we have been invited to see Professor Helman’s mummies,” Hattie reminded her.
“So we have! Well, then, I must go and fetch my parasol.” Great-aunt Iphigenia rose and went out of the saloon. Her voice floated back. “Ah, Edgar, Edwina! I didn’t see you there. Are you ready to join us? I see Sisyphus has organised some donkeys.”
“We’re quite ready,” Edgar Raven responded, from just outside the saloon.
“We just wanted to give this book to Hattie,” came Edwina Raven’s voice. “For her background reading, you know.”
“Very kind of you. Very thoughtful. Now, where did I leave my parasol?” Great-aunt Iphigenia’s voice faded away.
The Ravens came into the saloon and sat down at the table, one on either side of Hattie. They leaned towards her, their dark eyes glittering.
“Hatshepsut,” Edgar Raven said carefully, “we feel there is something we should say.”
“Um, yes?” said Hattie. She pushed her chair back a little. The Ravens felt rather uncomfortably close.
Edwina Raven shifted her chair forward. “When you voice concerns such as the ones you have just raised to your great-aunt, it could – well, it could possibly unsettle her.”
“Unsettle her?”
“Make her, um, question what she is doing. In her profession.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Hattie began. Then something occurred to her. She stopped sharply. “You heard what we were talking about? You were listening?”
“Quite accidentally, I assure you,” said Edgar Raven quickly.
Hattie wondered about that. She thought for a second.
“Then you also heard Great-aunt Iphigenia say she didn’t believe in superstition and curses and magic,” she said flatly.
“Indeed. But even so, perhaps it is unwise to upset your great-aunt. To make her concerned about you. Don’t you think? After all, it is her work that keeps Crumblin Castle in repair. And that supports you and your great-uncle.”
And supports you too, of course, Hattie thought uncharitably.
“I understand what you are saying,” she said carefully.
“Then we can depend on you not to raise these worries, these concerns, of yours again? Unfounded as they are? Not to disturb your great-aunt?” Dark eyes bored into hers. Was there an element of warning – even danger – in them?
Hattie did not know what to say. Certainly, she did not want to upset Great-aunt Iphigenia and Great-uncle Sisyphus. It was the last thing she wanted to do. But she also had no idea what she really believed, or what she might say or do in the future. If anything.
She pushed her chair back so quickly that the Ravens were forced to lean back abruptly.
“I will do the best I can,” she said. She turned away.
There. That didn’t commit her to anything. Did it?
The Ravens left. Hattie stayed at the table, thinking deeply. The Ravens were extremely concerned that their search for mummies should continue. They would be, of course. Their livelihood, and their long-term plan, whatever it was, depended on it. But had Hattie been mistaken when she detected a tone of menace in their voices? Surely not. What could they, realistically, do to her?
Hattie had assumed that everyone had left the boat. She was surprised when someone sat down beside her. Amal.
“I thought you went to the western bank,” Hattie said.
“No,” Amal said. “I decided to stay here and get on with some schoolwork. I don’t want to fall behind.” She paused. “What did they want, those Ravens?”
“You heard them?”
“Yes.” She wrinkled her nose. “I do not like them. They talk to my father. They whisper. They plan something, I think.”
“I think they do, too,” Hattie admitted. “I don’t know what, exactly, maybe it is nothing. But I have been wondering if their dealings with Great-aunt Iphigenia’s finances are quite as they should be.”
“The finances?” said Amal. “You mean they do the bookkeeping?”
“All of it,” said Hattie. She hesitated. “Perhaps – you are good at mathematics, Amal. Perhaps you could explain something that has been puzzling me.”
“If I can.”
“Well, then.” Hattie took a sheet of paper. She scribbled rapidly on it, explaining what she had seen while searching the Ravens’ files for the address of Peabody and Pruitt. The different figures on the invoice and the receipt. The pencilled figures against the purchase price.
Amal studied her notes. “It could be a correction,” she said at last. “A mistake was made, and this made it right. Or . . .”
“Or?”
“Or it might not be a mistake. It might be deliberate.”
“And that would mean?”
The two girls looked at each other. They both knew what that would mean.
“You would need proof,” said Amal. “You would need to see other examples.”
Hattie was silent. Any other examples would, she knew, be locked up securely in the study at Crumblin Castle. “I can’t do anything about that until we go home,” she said. “All I can do now is watch them. And try to find out all I can about anything they buy here, and what prices they pay.”
“Ah.” Amal was silent. If the Ravens’ dealings were suspicious, Hattie realised, that meant that their dealings with Omar Shaydi, Amal’s father, could be suspicious too.
“Well,” said Amal at last. “I do not like them, either. So we will watch them.”
Professor Helman had invited the whole Hetepheres party to breakfast at the Winter Palace Hotel on the day of his great event. They were not the only ones there. There was quite a large group preparing to cross the river, to see the ancient mummies being raised from the place where they had lain concealed from tomb robbers for so many years.
“We became aware of the existence of this cache when very ancient artefacts of extremely high quality began appearing unexpectedly on markets in Luxor, Cairo, England and America,” Professor Helman explained. “They were traced back to a certain family in the village of Qurnah. Three brothers, it seemed, had stumbled upon an amazing hidden collection of mummy cases and other items. The story went that one of them had been rescuing a goa
t that had fallen down a tomb shaft. When he climbed down after it, he found a corridor packed full of royal mummy cases and many other funerary items.”
“I take it this find was not reported to the authorities?” enquired Edgar Raven.
“It was not. Little by little, over several years, the brothers took items from the mortuary chamber and sold them off. It was a fine way of making a living, for a time. Until questions began to be asked.”
“What happened then?” Hattie asked.
“One of the brothers was questioned – I am unsure by what means – until he gave in,” Professor Helman replied. “He took officials to the location of the cache. His whole village, it was finally revealed, were tomb robbers by profession.”
“And had probably been so for hundreds of years,” observed Great-uncle Sisyphus.
Professor Helman smiled. “I don’t doubt it for a minute. In any case, the shaft was explored and at the bottom was the corridor packed full of mummy cases. More than forty of them. They lay in disarray; some had been pried open. Many were the mummy cases of pharaohs.”
“But why were they all together?” Hattie could not understand this. “Didn’t they each have their own tomb built for them?”
“Initially yes, they would have,” Professor Helman agreed. “But so many tombs were robbed and desecrated in the past – often very soon after a burial had taken place. So to protect the pharaohs’ mummies, priests moved them, some more than once, to other locations, and stored them in other – hopefully more secure – tombs. This collection ended up in the tomb of a Theban high priest, Pinudjem II. That is where we have been working. But we feel the mummies will no longer be safe there, not even if the chamber is sealed. Thieves still exist, and they are cunning and daring. So, today, we will raise these mummy cases of pharaohs and queens and nobles and send them to Cairo, for safekeeping.”
He took out his pocket watch and consulted it. “And I believe, if we go down to the river, our boats will be waiting for us.”
They crossed the wide, shining river in a fleet of small boats. The east bank, which they had just left, was a jumble of colour and noise: people calling, donkeys braying, white buildings, brown mud huts, green date palms. On the west bank, which they were approaching, high cliffs loomed in the distance. Silent brown villages baked in the sun, and birds circled far above, uttering dismal cries. Donkeys waited for them, but even the usually noisy donkeys seemed subdued. Apart from the circling birds, there was no sound but the ripple of the river, the sad whine of wind, and the shuffle of donkey hoofs on sand.
“It’s so quiet,” Hattie said softly.
“The valleys of the western desert are the place of the goddess Meretseger, she who loves silence,” said Professor Helman. “She was the goddess with the head of a cobra. She protected the workmen who built the tombs, but she could also spit venom at those who came to rob or vandalise them.” He glanced back at Hattie and smiled. “Considering what we are about to do today, be very careful of snakes, Hattie.”
He was not entirely joking, Hattie thought.
Soon, in the near distance, Hattie saw a temple, long and low, tucked into a fold of the hills and backed by a cliff of red stone. In front of it, many men in gallabiyas were already at work, carrying and passing buckets of sand and uncoiling long ropes.
The visitors were made comfortable in canvas chairs, under an awning. “I must leave you now for a while,” Professor Helman said. “The first mummy case is about to be raised. I really do not want to miss it.”
Hattie settled down in her chair to watch. One of the ladies in the group, she noticed, had produced paper and a box of watercolours, and was preparing to sketch the scene. She gave Hattie and Amal a friendly smile.
Professor Helman reached the group at the entrance to the shaft. Workmen clustered around, clutching ropes. Shouts, called down the shaft, drifted up to the watchers. The men stretched the ropes out and began to pull, and pull again.
Something was rising up the shaft. Hattie leaned forward eagerly as a huge mummy case appeared. Orders were shouted, and men leaped forward ready to steady the mummy case and guide it carefully towards the side of the shaft. It slid out, and was lowered to the sand: the mummy case of a pharaoh, Hattie was sure. It had to be; it was so large, so impressive, and glistening with gold.
Great-uncle Sisyphus and Great-aunt Iphigenia leaned forward, equally mesmerised, breathless. “Can you believe –”
“Hidden for so long!”
“Beautiful! So beautiful!”
Amal had dropped her book and watched, as interested as everyone else.
“Amal, my dear,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia, “just think. This could have been the king, the pharaoh, who ruled over your own ancestors.”
“Yes,” Amal said slowly. “I suppose. But it is so long ago. They seem almost a different people to me.”
And there were more shouts, and the workmen coiled their ropes and prepared to raise the next mummy case.
It was a long, long day. The sun rose higher, the day grew hotter, and many of the party who had come to watch made their excuses and went back across the river to Luxor.
But Hattie, Amal, Great-uncle Sisyphus, Great-aunt Iphigenia and the Ravens stayed on, watching as each mummy case was raised to the surface and laid on the sand in front of the temple. At last, there were forty or more mummy cases – some covered in bright hieroglyphs, some shining with gold – lying together in the sun. Mummy cases that had not seen daylight for perhaps three thousand years.
“Ah,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia yearningly. “How much we can learn from these!”
The Ravens’ eyes glistened. Hattie was sure they were thinking of how much could be earned, rather than learned, from the mummies.
Professor Helman invited them down to inspect the mummy cases for themselves.
“But tread warily,” he warned them. “There appear to be an unusual number of snakes about today. They seem to be under every rock.”
“She who loves silence,” Hattie murmured.
Professor Helman smiled at her. “Quite possibly,” he said. “Now, here we are.”
Great-uncle Sisyphus walked along the rows of mummy cases, eyes gleaming. “Some very intriguing inscriptions here,” he said. “I would indeed like to inspect them more closely.”
“Possibly that can be arranged, when you return to Cairo,” Professor Helman said. “I would value your opinions.”
“Is the chamber empty now?” Great-uncle Sisyphus asked.
“There is still much in the corridor and mortuary chamber,” Professor Helman said. “Many funerary goods. We will put a secure guard on it until it has been completely emptied. For now, I am anxious to send these mummy cases to Cairo.” He cast a look around. “You never know . . . these workmen are from the village, and it would not surprise me if some have been involved in tomb robbing for years. However, they have done sterling work here today. And they have still to carry the mummy cases to the boats.”
The workmen, Hattie saw, were being organised to lift the mummy cases and start off on their journey to the river. Some of the mummy cases were so large and heavy that it took sixteen men to carry them, on sturdy poles slipped beneath the case.
The lady painting the watercolour sketches was hard at work, recording the event. She smiled at Hattie when she saw her watching. “Would you young ladies care to have one of my sketches, my dears? They are only rough impressions, hastily done, but it may serve to remind you of your time in Egypt and what happened here today.”
Hattie was delighted. “Please! I’ll keep it forever!” she told the lady. Amal smiled her thanks.
Professor Helman’s remaining guests mounted their donkeys and followed the procession to the waiting boats. The sun was low in the sky; long shadows slid across the ground.
“The boats are nearly loaded. They will be away before sunset,” said Professor Helman with satisfaction.
And then a strange thing happened.
The fellahin from
the surrounding villages began to gather, climbing up the low cliffs beside the river. All along the river, on both banks, men in flowing gallabiyas, grey, white and brown, and women in black robes, stood silently, unmoving, watching the loaded boats leave the shore and move out to the middle of the river.
“There must be hundreds of them,” whispered Hattie. “What is happening?”
“I have never seen anything like this,” said Amal softly.
Professor Helman looked grave. “Word has spread through the villages that today the mummy cases are being taken away. I think they are here to farewell their ancient kings and queens. They know they will never return to Luxor, to their own country, again.”
Great-aunt Iphigenia looked startled. “Really? The common people care so deeply?”
“Apparently so,” Professor Helman said.
“Then,” Great-aunt Iphigenia said slowly, “I wonder – should the mummies be taken away? Should they stay here?”
“It is an interesting question,” said Professor Helman. “This is their country, certainly. But already, in the past, their tombs have been robbed. And by their own descendants. If they stay here, their resting place will almost certainly be robbed again. It is too difficult to protect them. They will be safer in the museum in Cairo. And there they can, of course, be studied.”
Suddenly the silent, watchful figures were silent no more. As the boats passed, the watchers on the cliffs moved. Women wailed, a weird, ululating sound. Leaning over, they scooped up handfuls of dust and sand and threw it over themselves. The men raised rifles and fired them into the air.
“They are mourning,” said Amal. “This is what they do.”
“Mourning?” said Great-aunt Iphigenia.
“Yes. Just as if one of their family has died.”
The boats passed by, and the cries and lamentations and rifle fire followed them down the river. Hattie shivered. In the growing dusk, the sounds were eerie, full of foreboding. Behind them, back at the temple, jackals cried, as if they too were mourning.
“How strange,” Great-aunt Iphigenia whispered. “How very strange. It is like a funeral for one of their own. Amal, these are your ancestors. Do you feel this way?”
The Mummy Smugglers of Crumblin Castle Page 17