Wrapped

by Jennifer Bradbury

  His eyes landed on me, seemed to hold there a bit longer, and I was reminded of how Mother and half the women of the Park described him. Magnetic. Showalter could hold an entire room in his gaze at once but still make each person feel as if he or she were its most important occupant. Mother explained it was a gift, the talent of a natural-born host and leader, the type of man who inspired loyalty and ardor in equal measure.

  But I was a girl in a beautiful dress, a girl capable enough of giving back as good as she got. I nodded, smiled demurely, and held his stare.

  His eyes never strayed from mine as he smiled mysteriously, then asked, “Who will be the first to dare upset our Egyptian guest on his journey through the underworld?” He looked at each of us, even though I was quite sure he’d determined who’d be first even before sending out the invitations. But I wasn’t expecting what he said next.

  “Agnes Wilkins! You must take the first pass,” Showalter boomed, beckoning me forward.

  “Me?” I asked in alarm. Whispers rippled through the crowd.

  My boldness of a moment before retreated as I flushed. Showalter was showing me some preference.

  “Of course,” he said. “In honor of your pending debut, Miss Wilkins.”

  I waited for Mother to intervene, to tell Showalter that I couldn’t possibly—we’d agreed—but the expression she wore when I glanced her way told me I was on my own. Had Showalter’s choice outweighed all her opinions about how lurid this affair was? Was the whim of a would-be suitor already overriding her principles? Finding no help in Mother, I looked back to Showalter. He was waiting, his stare so loaded with expectation that I found myself taken aback again. Was I imagining that there was an invitation to more lurking beneath that sly grin?

  Finally I found my voice. “Your kindness is most generous, but I could not presume—”

  “I insist,” he said, taking my elbow and steering me to the foot of the mummy. I could imagine the eyebrows rising behind me and felt my throat tighten. I expected Mother was by now beaming triumphantly, scheming about how best to announce an engagement that apparently she’d been plotting for months.

  I was not the only girl at the party who was meant to enjoy her first season this summer. I knew Julia Overton was supposed to be here. Dr. Clerval, the physician to half the residents of the Park, had brought his daughters. There was another girl, the niece of one of the new families at the south end of the Park, here as well. We were all in new gowns, all novices at social events like this, all fresh from the schoolrooms or tutors.

  But Showalter had singled me out.

  “Just there, Miss Wilkins,” he said, his breath warm on my shoulder.

  “Lord Showalter—”

  “Just take the blade here”—he slipped a small silver knife under a band of the linen—“and slide upward. Then you peel the wrappings back a layer at a time.”

  “Sir,” I began to protest, but he’d already disappeared back into the crowd of his guests to fetch others to join me for the entertainment.

  But there’s a person in there, I thought, trying not to wince. At least the remains of one. Someone who’d been folded carefully up inside those layers of fabric, someone who hadn’t meant to be seen again at all.

  Someone who hadn’t expected to be put on display, ogled by curious eyes.

  Someone a little like me.

  As oddly flattering as it felt to have caught the eye of Showalter, here was one feeling I was certain I would never enjoy: the sensation of all these eyes staring at me, appraising me, sizing up what my future was meant to be.

  I sought Father’s face in the crowd, and found him eyeing me from the periphery, an unreadable smile on his lips. The one that walked so fine a line between mockery and contentment.

  “Don’t look so frightened, Agnes,” my brother Rupert whispered as he joined me at the body, proud to be among those chosen to cut first. “It’s just some old bones and linen.”

  “I’m not scared of the mummy,” I returned.

  “You and your nonsense talk about women being the equal of men.” My oldest brother shook his head. He reached for his own knife and a handful of the linen.

  “Lord Showalter didn’t say we could begin,” I pointed out, though etiquette concerning affairs of this sort was a bit muddled. Even Mother had been unsure of the protocol.

  “Didn’t say we couldn’t. Trust me, Agnes. Fellow from down at the club”—he paused briefly to saw through a bit of the linen—“he told me all about these things. He’s got an uncle worth sixty thousand a year who’s already hosted one unwrapping. He said you just grab a knife and start digging away. There’s all sorts of little things the old natives used to wrap up in the cloths—trinkets mostly, items they reasoned the body would need in the next world.”

  “I’m familiar with the purposes of mummification,” I said.

  “But the good bit,” Rupert continued, ignoring my jab as he hacked away, “is that sometimes they would hide some valuable items. And not just old things that are valuable because some museum might want them. Jewels and precious stones and so forth.”

  “It just doesn’t seem right somehow,” I said, “disregarding the last wishes of a human being.”

  He shrugged. “Just a body, Agnes. Don’t let your imagination get the better of you. Though I fear those novels you are so fond of have made you afraid of the real world.”

  I felt it unwise to point out that a horde of London’s wealthiest and most fashionable citizens preparing to pillage a centuries-old Egyptian mummy like a Christmas pudding was perhaps as far from the real world as I could imagine.

  But to Rupert, past twenty but with no more sense than he’d had at fourteen, this was real.

  Our host placed a third and final guest at the body, Lady Kensington. Showalter stared at us gravely, but the volume of his voice carried out to the thirty or so other faces watching eagerly in the firelight. “Begin! But beware awakening the mummy and rousing its curse!” He managed to keep his stony expression for a few seconds before he collapsed into a giggle, and motioned to the sitar player who had followed us outside from the dining room to offer some musical accompaniment to our macabre task.

  What a sitar had to do with Egypt, I couldn’t tell, except that Showalter and many of his guests seemed content to lump all things exotic and foreign into one tidy category.

  I realized sadly that this might be the closest I ever came to glimpsing the wonders of the world beyond England. How I longed to board a frigate to Egypt—or anywhere, for that matter—wander through a bazaar, ride a camel to the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings with a veil pulled across my face. I’d rather hear street musicians plink away at odd instruments than listen to a sitar player and a string quartet fail to reproduce the mystery of North Africa. I looked at the mummy then for what it truly was—an emissary from the world I would likely never know or taste or feel—and it nearly broke my heart.

  Rupert had already dug a swath a few inches wide, revealing only more wrappings. Lady Kensington swallowed hard and picked up her own knife, delicately sliding it under an edge. I steeled myself to my task, reasoning that the sooner I began, the sooner I’d be excused. But my eye fell on a living person as out of place here as the mummy. A young man sat perched on a stool just outside the firelight. He suddenly rose to his feet, balancing a great ledger book across one arm, a grease pencil waiting in his other hand.

  He was no guest. His coat was too shabby and his shoes too low at the heel to merit an invitation. But his height, his intent brown eyes, and the square shape of his jaw more than made up for any indignity in his dress. He rivaled even my imagined picture of Mr. Darcy. I forced my eyes away, afraid of being caught staring by the mysterious young man or anyone else.

  “Agnes,” came Lord Showalter’s voice at my ear. “Others are waiting. You must take your pass and find what you will.”

  I understood why it mattered to him that I enjoy this. That others see me enjoying it. He’d made that clear when he called me
out first.

  But I didn’t understand why I felt both flattered and annoyed by his attention.

  I picked up my own small, sharp knife, but still I hesitated. I studied the bundle that sat before me, wondering if it was a trick of the torchlight that made the wrappings where I stood seem a bit lighter in color. I was about to ask Showalter if he noticed it as well, when he spoke again.

  “Please, Miss Wilkins,” he said. “If you are uncomfortable—”

  “I’m not,” I said quickly. But now I was irritated and wanted only to get this over with.

  “What is that young man doing?” I asked him as I felt the first bit of linen give way under the knife. The stranger hovered near the head of the body now, furiously jotting notes into his ledger as Rupert and Lady Kensington hacked away.

  Showalter followed my gaze. “He’s someone from the museum. They like to catalog the bodies, describe the remains and the condition of the wrappings. Claim it helps to document every specimen, even ones for private parties. I don’t even know this fellow’s name, but Banehart at the museum sent him over.”

  “Hmm,” I said, cutting through more of the layers, the dust of the linen making my fingers slippery.

  “Don’t worry, my dear, he can’t take any of the things we find. I paid for this mummy—and half the ones in that museum. So what’s here is ours to keep. Certainly if something is precious enough we might choose to donate it to the collection, but it is my greatest wish that you’ll return home tonight with a lovely memento of this auspicious evening.”

  “Aha!” my brother cried, chest thrust out, golden hair falling into his eyes as he extracted a small ankh from the furrow of linen he’d plowed. The trinket was lovely, burnished gold crested with a dark green stone. My brother, however, seemed to think that he was the one worth admiring. Rupert held the ankh above his head for the crowd to see, grinning as if he’d just rescued it from a pit of hissing asps.

  As the guests surged forward to inspect this prize, I continued in my course, determined to find something and have done with my part in desecrating the grave of a fellow human—be it male, female, pharaoh or merchant.

  Blessedly, we were still nowhere near the actual remains. But the pile of linen already unwound from the body seemed impossibly large, spilling off my narrow end of the table, coiling about my feet, as if I were the next in line to be immobilized and preserved for all eternity. I glanced at Showalter. Perhaps I was.

  “A fine discovery,” Lord Showalter said to my brother, holding the ankh up to catch the torchlight. If Showalter had a natural gift for commanding an audience, he was equally adept at keeping one enthralled. He appeared to enjoy this role immensely, particularly when he could pontificate on a subject he knew as well as Egypt. “The cut and color of the stone are consistent with artifacts from a certain Theban dynasty.”

  Then a metal edge emerged from the cloth in front of me, like a scallop shell half buried in the sand. My pulse raced as the undeniable excitement of the moment took hold. I glanced up to see if anyone else had seen it yet, but they were all still attending carefully to Showalter’s impromptu lecture about Rupert’s ankh. So no one noticed as I pulled the item from the wrapping. No one but me saw the object breathe fresh air for the first time in a thousand years. The feeling was unexpectedly thrilling, and I could only imagine what it might feel like to unearth whole temples forgotten to time, like that Swiss man had found at Abu Simbel a couple of years ago.

  I started to call to the others, but they were listening raptly as our host delivered a detailed description of a small scroll found by Lady Kensington at the shoulder of the corpse.

  I left them to Showalter’s performance and studied the treasure I’d unwrapped. It was an intricately carved outline, shaped like a dog’s head, made of what appeared to be iron owing to the rust flaking from the corners. It fit perfectly in the palm of my hand, the snout tipping out at the first knuckle of my ring finger, its ears extending to the base of my thumb. The detail along the edges was extraordinarily precise, each tooth in the parted muzzle sharp, the ruff at the back of the neck bristling. A small scrap of linen clung to the rim, secured with a knot too tight for me to work out easily. The characters printed upon the linen there were even more impenetrable. A different sort of hieroglyph, I reasoned, but just as unreadable as those on Lady Kensington’s scroll.

  Showalter was concluding his lecture, and I knew my discovery and I would next be on display. I stared at the sad little dog’s head.

  And I felt pity for it in a way that surprised me. Pity that it had been plucked from its own quiet life inside the wrappings, would now be subject to scrutiny, have its value and utility assessed.

  It wasn’t fair. Any of it.

  I checked the crowd again, especially the young scribe from the museum. He was frantically jotting notes, straining to get a closer glimpse of the ankh.

  Showalter had said we could keep what we found, hadn’t he?

  And hadn’t our friends and neighbors seen enough of Showalter standing over me this evening to keep tongues wagging and minds whirling for weeks?

  And hadn’t I had as much attention as I could endure for one evening?

  Yes, yes, and yes.

  Satisfied, I closed my palm around the trinket and tucked it into the bodice of my dress.

  Chapter Three

  I’d only ever stolen biscuits from the kitchen at home, so I was surprised that I felt as cool in that moment as the bit of ironwork hiding in my dress.

  And it was this realization that thrilled me even more than the act itself.

  To stand amid a throng of people and have a secret. To have done something just beneath their very noses was simply the most delicious feeling.

  Not that I had in the strictest sense actually stolen it. If I was guilty of any theft, it was merely that I robbed the other partygoers of a glimpse of the little object.

  I slipped nearer the knot of admirers poring over the scroll. Lord Showalter, brow furrowed, announced, “No, the hieroglyphs are unfamiliar.”

  “Has the Crown made any progress in that area?” Lady Marbury, the oldest and most respected member of the Park’s grand society, asked gravely. Britain had recovered the Rosetta Stone from Napoleon’s troops after his defeat at the Nile some ten years ago. I’d seen it at the museum and knew like the rest of the world that it represented the best hope for eventually unlocking the hieroglyphics adorning the many artifacts now populating London, that it might hold the keys to unlock the secrets of ancient Egypt.

  “No, my lady, but my people at the museum assure me we are making progress.”

  Lord Showalter was as avid a collector of experts as he was of Egyptian antiquities. He’d brought dozens of scientists and historians to London from the Continent and Egypt, several of whom were installed as employees at the British Museum.

  Showalter himself had only been living in London for the last five or six years. Mother said he’d inherited his title and a stunning manor somewhere near York but hadn’t lived there, taking degrees from Cambridge and then spending a few years on the Continent, where he’d increased an already sizable fortune by buying shares in a shipping company. But then he moved to London to indulge his passion for Egyptology, to be at the heart of the world’s greatest collection of artifacts, and to oversee developments and steward the considerable funds he’d endowed the museum with.

  Showalter’s valet—a man I knew only as Tanner—suddenly broke through the crowd in great agitation and whispered in his master’s ear. I could not hear what was said, but I could see Showalter’s face transform from contented self-importance to something altogether grim.

  “When?” he barked, glaring at the valet in a rare display of temper. I blanched, half-worried that my theft had been seen, that I was about to be exposed. . . .

  “Just received the message, sir,” said the valet, his voice rising to match Showalter’s. The light caught the rest of his face now, revealing the oddity that made him seem at home among Showa
lter’s collection of curious objects. One of his eyes had a misshapen pupil, the black dot spilling out into the gray-brown iris like the cracked yolk of an egg.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Showalter, pushing his way free of his guests. “I’ve urgent business to attend to. I’m sure Mrs. Blalock and the Wilkins family will continue events in my absence.” He left without another word, striding hurriedly back to the house, Tanner scurrying behind.

  My brother immediately took charge. “Right, then. Who’s next? Agnes obviously hasn’t the nerve for all this. Who will take her place?” I gladly surrendered my knife, slipping away as Rupert installed three new treasure seekers.

  I felt a hand on my arm. “You can’t think I didn’t notice that!”

  Julia Overton stared at me, her eyes imploring. We’d been friends since we were small, having resided three doors down from each other for much of our lives. Julia’s family usually summered in the Lakes, and even took me with them one year, and we’d shared tutors in music and painting.

  “Notice what?” I asked her, my cheeks growing hot. My hand flew instinctively to the bodice of my dress as if to make sure the dog’s head wasn’t peeking out. At the last moment, I let my fingers rest on the jade pendant I had insisted Mother allow me to wear this evening. It was another of the baubles Father had brought me from his travels. This one came from China, the sea green stone shaped into a delicate little butterfly. I’d worn it faithfully since he presented it to me on my eleventh birthday. I rubbed the wing as if it were a talisman.

  “Don’t play coy, Agnes Wilkins, everyone saw it!”

  Suddenly my palms and forehead felt damp. The small iron dog’s head in my dress seemed to burn against my skin.

  “I don’t”—I cast about desperately for a lie—“know what you mean.”

  “Truly? You didn’t notice that Showalter as good as declared himself right there?”

  I breathed, smiling with relief. But Julia misinterpreted the reason.

  “I expect you’d be pleased. He’s only the man half of London’s matchmakers are gunning for this season. And he fancies you!” she said, her own smile just a little too perfect, the slightest hint of bitterness in her voice. Julia was my friend, but I was reminded of a painful truth: During our debut, others would pit us as rivals for the affections of London’s wealthiest and most weddable men.