by Emma Carroll
‘These are important times, Lysandra,’ he says. ‘I’m relying on you to keep an account of all that is happening as we move from one king to the next.’ This last he says with a proud tilt of the chin; I’m only glad Maya isn’t here to see it.
Though my guilt over Kyky’s death is strong, I hide it deeply. I find comfort in being busy, being involved. A priest is called to lead the embalming: I’m relieved it’s his knife that cuts into Kyky’s belly. We take the liver, lungs, stomach, intestines that he passes us. Their faint meaty smell makes me think of a butchered animal; this is no longer the Kyky I knew, which makes it a little easier. Mother and I, with a couple of the healing ladies, pack each organ in salt for drying. The same is done with the gaping hole in Kyky’s torso. All that remains inside is his heart.
The priest is quick but careful. Inserting his hook up Kyky’s nose, he teases out a grey shape with the look of fish gills. The brain is near complete, enough for Mother to scoop it up in her hands and place it in a basket on the floor. Later, we will burn it. Brains have no place in the afterlife.
Forty days pass. Forty soft spring days in which, as the grass plumps and the fruit trees bud, Kyky’s body shrinks away. Ay becomes our new pharaoh: this is no surprise, either. Even Horemheb, who’s always had the look of a leader-in-waiting, makes little fuss. It’s Maya who concerns me. His anger is like a flame waiting to catch. Though I confess my mistake about Kyky’s final dream, he refuses to think differently of Ay.
‘That man has ice where his heart should be,’ he says.
The tomb-building is not going well, either. The workmen Ay has hired are lazy and unskilled, their chisels making a mess of the walls that even last-minute plastering cannot disguise. The rooms are small, there are fewer than befit a royal tomb. When the sarcophagus is lowered in, ropes snap, a man’s leg is crushed. The chamber that has been recently dug out is now full of rubble again, which only adds to the work. Night after night, Maya comes home cursing.
At the end of the forty days, we are ready to bind the body. At the palace, Mother and I take the organs from their salt, wrapping each in linen strips and packing them into the canopic jars.
When we uncover the body, something is amiss. The priest’s knife wound has reopened. It’s red and fresh. I’m startled. Mother tuts, says these things happen and not to make a fuss. We’ll seal the wound with wax. But Kyky’s left arm has also moved. Though we’d folded it across his body, it now lies at his side. The centre of his chest looks sunken. When I touch it, it feels hollow because there’s nothing underneath.
‘Mother,’ I whisper in shock. ‘His heart isn’t here.’
She tuts again, reaches over the body to check it herself. ‘It’s no business of ours, Lysandra,’ is all she says. ‘Stop poking and pressing. We’ve work to do.’
But when she thinks I’m not looking she takes an amulet – a small one, shaped like the sun – and puts it in the place where his heart should be.
We wash the body, then rub it with scented oil. The eyelids and nostrils are plugged with resin-soaked fabric. All the time I’m thinking about Kyky’s heart. Both Mother and I know it’s not normal to remove it: a person needs their heart to live on in the afterlife. It’s the centre of their being, what makes them who they are.
We put sawdust into his empty torso to give it shape, then just as Mother said, we seal the wound with wax. With prayers recited and incense burned, this alone is a whole day’s work. Even by the end of it I’m still troubled by the missing heart. Someone close to the king has been meddling, taking what isn’t theirs.
The next day we begin to wrap the body. We use linen strips around each finger, each toe. Occasionally between layers we stop to say a prayer to Amun or Osiris, or to tuck a lucky amulet between the folds to help Kyky on his journey. The process is meticulous. It takes days and days – fifteen in total. By the end of it our backs are ready to break, yet Kyky’s form is strong and robust – far more than it ever was in life.
With the tomb as ready as it can be, the burial takes place. It’s a bright, windy day as we walk the path down into the valley, the sounds of weeping women echoing off the rocks. Seventy days have passed, yet my guilt still hurts, and I miss our dear friend like a part of our family has gone. I’m no wiser about the whereabouts of his heart, either.
All through the ceremony, my brother is sullen, silent. The Opening of the Mouth ritual is performed by Ay himself. As he touches the place where Kyky’s mouth is, I glance at Maya. My brother stays quiet. The air all around us is thick with things unsaid.
The first and second coffins are glorious and gold. Maybe Ay has done his godson proud, after all. Yet when the final lid is lowered on to the sarcophagus, it’s clear it won’t fit. There’s an awkward, embarrassed pause. Ay starts blithering and blaming others. Maya thumps a wall, then storms out. I’m scared they’ll go after him, but no one does. They’re too concerned with the lid.
A workman is called. The outer coffin’s feet are too big.
‘Hack them off,’ Ay says, bluntly.
The workman does as he’s told, grunting over his saw until a pair of feet land on the floor with a clumsy thud. It makes me wince. The mistake is then hastily covered with stinking resin. It’s an ugly business, hardly befitting a dog, never mind a pharaoh. In the tomb itself, the walls are covered with pictures – so crude and rushed the paint is still wet.
The ceremony continues. How jarring it is to be asking the gods to guide our pharaoh when a pair of feet sit before us on the ground. Finally, the prayers over, we file outside. I’m glad to be back in the sun.
Next, the tomb is filled with random objects: chariot wheels, baskets of linen, walking sticks, trumpets, fruit platters, oil jars, flowers tied in bunches. There are shabtis to guard the doors, swords, trunks. Apart from the sticks, I can’t imagine Kyky needing any of this in the afterlife. None of it looks like items he once owned or was attached to. I’m wondering if Ay has simply cleared out an old back room at the palace and dumped its contents here.
High above us on the mountainside a white-clad figure catches my eye. Someone is up there, scrambling over the rocks. They’re heading for the half-dug hole where Kyky was meant to lie. My mouth goes dry. It’s Maya. I’m terrified he’s going to jump or throw stones down on us in anger. He does neither: he disappears into the mountain.
It’s then, like a lock unclicking, that I know what has happened to Kyky’s heart. My brother has taken it. Without it our pharaoh is not complete, which means his journey to the afterlife won’t be possible.
And this is Maya’s plan.
He knows how Kyky longed to be an ordinary boy. The day he was made king was the unhappiest of his short life – that’s what he told Maya. His true joy was in his friendships, not in the bitter wrangling of his own family, whose only interest in him was to further their own needs. To continue as a pharaoh in the afterlife would be torture for Kyky, not a reward. Perhaps this way, with his heart hidden inside the mountain, our dear friend will find some peace at last.
Wiping tears, I glance at Ay, fearful he’s noticed what’s happening above us. But he’s still watching over the burial, swimming in his own glory. He thinks he’s done well today, shown respect for the godson who in life he treated infernally. He will never read my account of Tutankhamun’s last days. When he asks to see it, I’ll lie and say it fell into the fire.
Meanwhile, if Maya’s calculations are correct then on one treasured winter day each year the sun will align with Kyky’s mountain resting place. I look at my brother, so thin, so awkward, and these days far too serious, and think of a saying Kyky’s beloved grandmother used to use: ‘The nut doesn’t reveal the tree it contains.’
What it is, I think, is a saying about happiness. A nut that looks so dead and dry, given time, will grow into something lush, green and beautiful.
Rest assured, I won’t be burning my account in any fire. I’ll bury it in the same quiet place where Maya has laid our dearest friend to rest. The
n, when my time comes – and Maya’s too – we’ll join him. And we’ll be in the afterlife, all together.
PART FOUR
The youthful pharaoh was before us at last.
HOWARD CARTER, ARCHAEOLOGIST
14
Tulip was the first to speak. ‘Cripes almighty! What Howard Carter would give to read all this!’
Never mind Howard Carter – I felt so giddy and shaken, I was glad to be sitting down.
‘Kyky’s heart can’t have survived, can it?’ I asked. It was mad to think it had. Yet hadn’t Professor Hanawati mentioned something wrapped in linen, jammed in the bottom of the jar?
‘Won’t know until you look,’ Tulip reasoned.
The very idea that a three-thousand-year-old heart was still inside the jar made me feel strange in a different way. To think that part of Kyky might be here with us – his blood, his cells.
I took a very deep breath. The jar lay between us on the bunk, the lid still off. I picked it up. Braced myself. As I slid my hand deep inside I half expected to touch something slippery and bloody – it wasn’t, of course. It was dry, and came away fairly easily so what I now had in my hand was a piece of linen, neatly folded like a handkerchief.
‘Open it!’ Tulip urged.
I hesitated. The fabric looked frail.
‘I don’t think we should,’ I said. ‘What if it falls apart?’
Oz was sitting closer than usual. ‘I’d really like to see it, Lil.’
Truth was, so would I.
‘I’ll do it slowly, then – and if it looks like it’s going to crumble or tear, I’ll stop, all right?’
The others nodded.
Ever so gently, I unfolded a corner. Then another. Amazingly, with care, the fabric stayed in one piece. As it came off, layer by tissue-thin layer, I began to feel something solid underneath. Much as I was desperate to see what, I was wary too. It felt wrong and wonderful to be poring over a dead person’s heart. And all the time that familiar prickly, chilly sensation crept down my backbone.
‘Careful!’ Tulip whispered at my shoulder as I peeled back the final layer.
My breath stopped.
There was Kyky’s heart, sitting in the palm of my hand, the size of a hen’s egg. It looked like a clod of earth – flaky and mottled-brown – or the rusty tip of a centuries-old spear. You could almost see from the way it tapered at one end that it was the shape of a heart. It was incredible.
‘Wow.’ Tulip breathed. ‘That’s got to be the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen.’
Oz shuffled even closer. ‘I wonder, Lil, could I just—’ He put his hand out to take the heart.
‘No, Oz,’ Tulip said. ‘It’s not respectful to pass it around. Let Lil put him back now we’ve all had a look.’
Gently rewrapping the heart one fragile layer at a time, I returned it to the jar and replaced the lid. Tulip, I realised, had just called the package ‘him’. This was what it had become: Kyky was someone we felt we almost knew.
Which brought me back to Grandad. Lysandra’s descriptions of fevers and lungs and hacked-off feet were all reminders of the strange ways the curse was working. As soon as we got to Luxor, we had to find Kyky’s burial spot. And be quick about it too. With that sense of foreboding still hanging over us, who knew when – and where – the curse would strike again?
‘One treasured day each year …’ I murmured, going over Lysandra’s words. ‘If we knew what date, then we might be able to work it out from where the sun shines.’
Tulip shook her head. ‘Too complicated. Anyway, calendars were different back then.’
‘You’re missing the point entirely!’ Oz groaned, rolling his eyes. ‘We’re looking for a spot directly above where Mr Carter is digging. East-facing, high up in the rock face.’
He made it sound simple. And maybe it would be. We certainly had more details now than we’d had a few days ago.
‘You’re right, Oz,’ I said. ‘That’s where we’ll start.’ Though the thought of searching in sight of Mr Carter made me more nervous than ever. I remembered the young man on the train who’d told me to keep an eye on him. Nobody, it seemed, quite trusted Mr Carter. The last thing we wanted was him getting his hands on the jar. He might not have thought much of it twenty-odd years ago, but if he knew what we knew now, well, he’d insist on examining it, putting it in a museum – or worse, taking it for himself. We could forget it going back to Maya’s little tomb where it belonged.
Tulip tugged her bottom lip, staring thoughtfully at the jar. ‘It’s some story, isn’t it?’
I nodded. It really was. Such a different story to the one the papers were telling, which was mostly all about Mr Carter. And that, I realised grimly, was another problem. For here we were on our way to Egypt with Mrs Mendoza, a newspaper writer in search of an exclusive.
‘Tulip. Oz.’ I looked them both in the eye. ‘You’re not to tell your mum about this, got it?’
Tulip nodded so fast I thought her head might bounce off. Oz, though, sat back, frowning.
‘It’s a decent bit of news,’ he said.
It was, and I felt bad about it because I liked Mrs Mendoza very much. And it’d be a brilliant way to prove her priggish editor wrong. But we were here to return Kyky to a private, secret place, not blazon it all over the newspapers.
‘In order to break the curse, we have to return the jar,’ I reminded Oz. ‘Don’t think of it as Tutankhamun’s heart – it’s Kyky’s, who never wanted to be famous in the first place.’
‘But it’s the sort of scoop that could make Mama’s career, you know,’ Oz pointed out.
‘That’s enough, Oz,’ Tulip warned.
‘She needs to find a big story,’ he argued.
I took a long, slow breath. How could I explain I was doing this for my grandad, when all Oz wanted to do was help his mum?
It was Tulip who settled it.
‘If you mention this to anyone, I swear I’ll tell Mama—’ She hesitated.
‘Tell her what?’ Oz challenged.
‘Tell her who you thought you saw at Athens station!’ Tulip blurted out.
I turned to Oz, intrigued. ‘Who did you think you saw at Athens station, then?’ because this was the first I’d heard of it.
He looked teary and angry. ‘I’m not saying. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
*
An hour and a half later we docked at Alexandria. It was quite something to be standing on Egyptian soil at last: I could’ve sworn the soles of my feet actually tingled.
From Alexandria we caught a train to Cairo. I must’ve fallen asleep eventually because when I opened my eyes, it was daylight. Oz and Tulip were still asleep. Mrs Mendoza paused in her writing to point her pencil at the window.
‘Look!’ she whispered. ‘Cairo!’
I sat up, rubbing my eyes.
We were coming into the city. The buildings near the railway line were low, sand-coloured, packed tightly together. Between them were archways leading to little courtyards, alleys, roads, all busy with people going about their lives. I saw men in white robes, veiled women carrying pots on their heads. And rising above it all every now and then, I’d spot the dome or minarets of a mosque. Though it was still early morning, the light had a soft, peachy glow to it. This, I soon realised, was mostly dust, stirred up by carts, donkeys, motorcars and people walking. It was like the sort of haze you get at the start of a very hot summer’s day.
I’d never seen anywhere so unlike the grey, wet London I’d left behind. The city was strange and beautiful. Everything I’d imagined it might be – and more. Through the little open vent at the top of the window I could smell Cairo: warm, dusty, animal dung, old apples.
I imagined Grandad all those years ago taking this same journey; he’d have been sitting here, just like me, not wanting to miss a second of it.
Before long, the train began to slow. Tulip yawned. Oz kicked out his legs and promptly woke up.
‘We’re here!’ he cried, squint
ing at the window.
‘Approaching Cairo station, yes,’ Mrs Mendoza informed him.
The part of the city we were now passing through had streets as wide as London’s, lined with tall, white, expensive-looking buldings. And like in London there were street sellers, newsboys, all shouting above the traffic. Then just before our train slid into the station itself, I caught sight of a horse lying in the road. It was still wearing its harness and looked rather dead.
‘How awful!’ Tulip covered her eyes.
‘It happens in our country too, you know,’ Oz remarked.
I’d never seen a dead horse in London. And the fact no one had moved this poor thing – carts, carriages, motorcars, donkeys simply carried on around it – reminded me, with a shivery thrill, how far I was from home.
15
Later that morning, we finally arrived in Luxor. The Winter Palace Hotel was a very fancy affair. It stood on the banks of the Nile like a giant frosted cake, with two sets of wide steps leading up to it, and a turning circle for cabs at the front. It was about as un-Grandad-like as any place could be.
‘It’s so swanky, Tulip!’ I whispered, giving my dusty shoes a fierce wipe on the mat before going inside.
‘It’s THE hotel to be staying at,’ Tulip whispered back.
Though she was clearly excited by this, it worried me. With a jar this valuable in my suitcase, experts and archaeologists were the very last type of people I wanted to be around.
‘Is the Valley of the Kings far from here?’ I asked.
‘Only a few miles on the other side of the river.’
Which was better news. A quick wash and a rest in our room, and we’d sneak out when Mrs Mendoza was working. A few miles wasn’t far: we could walk it.
Tulip was right about Mr Ibrahim: when I asked one of the hotel staff, he confirmed there was no one working here with that name. Not that we needed him now, thankfully. Lysandra had given us the details we’d been after.