Secrets of a Sun King

by Emma Carroll

  Pepe wasn’t impressed. ‘Oh, how your Englishmen like to make themselves at home.’

  To my over-hot, overwhelmed brain, the whole event felt like a farce. Everyone was here for a first glimpse inside a tomb which had, in secret, already been opened. It was all very proper, very much above board. What happened here last night, though, definitely wasn’t.

  A barely recognisable Mr Carter then sidled up to Mrs Mendoza. Jacket buttoned, hair parted and oiled, he looked terribly smart as he shook her hand and thanked her for coming. He even leaned over to ruffle Oz’s curls, which made him yelp in horror and Tulip pull a face.

  Mr Carter was all smiles. ‘I’m delighted you could make it, Madeleine, though I trust you’ve no notebook or recording equipment about your person?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Mrs Mendoza beamed back at him. ‘I’m here as your guest, nothing more.’

  Like Tulip, she was good at lying when she had to be. So was Pepe, who salaamed graciously to Mr Carter, despite what he must’ve been feeling.

  ‘How do you know him, Mama?’ Tulip asked once Mr Carter had moved on.

  ‘Well, darling …’ Mrs Mendoza hesitated. It was the first time I’d ever seen her blush. ‘The silly man tried to woo me once with a ring so ancient-looking it certainly wasn’t from Tiffany’s.’

  ‘Was it stolen?’ I asked.

  Mrs Mendoza adjusted her hat. ‘Let’s just say Mr Carter has probably been helping himself to Egyptian gold for rather a long time. He’s been worried I’ll blow his cover ever since.’

  Tulip made quiet little sick noises at the thought of her mum and Mr Carter. I had to admit, it was a bit disgusting.

  But it was also a reminder – as if I needed one – that Mr Carter should know we had our eye on him.

  Our attention was quickly drawn by an official clapping his hands and beckoning us over to the tomb entrance for the start of the ceremony.

  Mr Carter was the first to speak: ‘Ladies, gentlemen, dignitaries.’ He gestured towards the tomb entrance, where last night’s gate now stood wide open. ‘Welcome to our latest discovery, KV62. K meaning Kings, V meaning Valley. It is the sixty-second tomb to be discovered here. Now, if you’d like to follow me.’

  Tulip leaned on my arm as we made our way down the tomb steps.

  ‘Just remember who else has walked here,’ I said, thinking of Lysandra and her brother who would’ve been in this exact spot all those centuries ago. It was hard not to be a tiny bit thrilled.

  ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ Tulip agreed. ‘I keep thinking of everything Maya did for his friend.’

  ‘That’s what friends do,’ I told her fondly, squeezing her arm. ‘At least the very best ones.’

  At the bottom of the steps, Mr Carter led us into a narrow passageway that sloped gently downhill. The air was warm and rather stale. After the bright sunshine, the lantern-lit gloom took a bit of getting used to.

  The chamber wasn’t exactly big – the fifteen or so of us soon filled it – but it was much larger than Kyky’s tomb up on the cliff face. It felt different too, neat and impersonal, like a bed that no one had slept in.

  When the passage came to an abrupt halt at another door, Tulip hissed in my ear, ‘Get ready: it’s show time!’

  As fifteen people all jostled for a view, we found ourselves on tiptoe at the back. The door, though not particularly tall, was wide, covered in plaster and little seals that Mr Carter was saying now bore evidence of the tomb being a royal one. A basket and some reeds stood in front of the door: Mr Carter whisked both away to reveal a hole hastily patched up with wood and plaster.

  ‘We’re not sure yet if the tomb beyond this door is untouched. Grave robbers have been here in the past, as you can see,’ he told us.

  He had a nerve. We knew he’d knocked a hole in the wall last night. So did Lord Carnarvon and his daughter. But they let Mr Carter weave his story anyway, dazzling us with lies.

  ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, in the presence of our Egyptian friends, we’ll endeavour to break into the tomb.’ Mr Carter motioned for a workman to come forward.

  An excited murmur spread through the group as the man began prising off the nailed-on bits of wood. I watched in amazement. Surely he’d know those weren’t ancient nails. The plaster would still be wet, the wood freshly cut. Nobody spoke up, though. The workman kept pulling, as Mr Carter, Lady Evelyn and Lord Carnarvon watched, as cool as a whole bunch of cucumbers.

  Next we were invited to come and peer through the hole in the door. Being very English, we formed a queue, going up one at a time.

  ‘Let the children go first,’ someone said, and before we knew it, we were nudged to the very front of the line.

  ‘It’s Ay’s old junk, remember,’ Tulip whispered, as Mr Carter beckoned me to come forward.

  ‘Ready, young miss?’ he asked.

  Everyone was watching: I could feel their eyes on me as I wiped my sweaty hands in my skirt. ‘Yes.’

  With a click, the torch went on, and he shone it into the dark inner room. The first thing I saw was a wheel, then a glorious-looking chariot lying on its side. I bit my lip in surprise: was it the chariot Kyky used to race Maya?

  Seeing something I recognised from Lysandra’s account took the wind out of me, rather. This tomb – big, golden, soon to be world-famous – was all for someone who’d once been a living, breathing, pomegranate-throwing young man.

  As the beam swung left, it picked out a gold box, a sandal, a statue’s eye, the pleats of a tunic. More objects glinted as the light moved. In a far corner were two black figures, both as tall as a man, standing either side of another door, like they were guarding it. I couldn’t see a coffin, though, or anything that might be a mummified body. At my guess, this was just an outer chamber. The door in the corner might well lead on to more rooms like this one, heaped full of three-thousand-year-old treasure. It was an incredible find, there was no denying it. It was probably beyond even Mr Carter’s dreams.

  ‘There you are, then, that’s enough,’ he said, abruptly switching off the torch.

  I rubbed my eyes, like I was waking up from a dream of my own. Mr Carter was already beckoning Tulip to take her turn, but I didn’t move aside.

  ‘Mr Carter, what are you going to do with all these things?’ I said. My politest voice wasn’t a patch on Tulip’s but it got Mr Carter’s attention.

  ‘They’ll be removed, cleaned up, recorded and catalogued,’ he explained. ‘Lord Carnarvon is a collector, the Metropolitan Museum in New York have an interest.’ He stopped to frown. ‘Why do you ask?’

  There was a silence. Everyone stared at me. The two Egyptian officials who stood at the edge of the group were scowling. One of them looked away in obvious annoyance.

  I could feel myself clamming up. I glanced at Tulip, then Oz, who was studying his shoes. It was Alex who mouthed: ‘Keep going!’

  I straightened my shoulders.

  ‘My grandad was a collector of sorts,’ I said. ‘He came here to Egypt over twenty years ago, and with a friend they bought something—’

  ‘Charming, I’m sure,’ Mr Carter interrupted, eyeing his wristwatch. ‘Look, do you kids want to see inside the tomb or not? Other people are waiting to have a look, and then I’ve got a tea party to host.’

  ‘Exactly.’ This was Lady Evelyn. ‘Do hurry up now.’

  I still didn’t move.

  ‘Mr Carter, my grandad and his friend spent the rest of their lives regretting taking the object that wasn’t theirs. It should never have been removed from its tomb in the first place. Having it brought them all sorts of terrible luck. His friend has now died, and my grandad is gravely ill in hospital.’

  ‘If this is about the curse, then it’s tommyrot,’ Mr Carter said, irritably. He pushed past me, but stopped in surprise as Tulip, Oz and Alex blocked him from going any further. ‘What ruddy nonsense is all this, then?’

  ‘We want you to listen,’ Tulip said. ‘It’s not right to disturb dead people’s tombs.’
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br />   Someone coughed. Over to my left I heard Lord Carnarvon mutter, ‘Who the devil is this girl?’

  Mr Carter meanwhile looked daggers at Tulip, then at me. ‘Your grandad knows you’re here, does he, giving me a headache?’

  ‘I’ll tell him all about it when I get home,’ I replied sharply. ‘He’d be proud of me.’

  ‘Why, you cheeky little swine!’ cried Mr Carter.

  I didn’t flinch. Mr Carter had overlooked who the tomb really belonged to. He’d talked round the Egyptians with his authority and powerful connections, but the other side to him – the secret, shabby, bloody-minded side – he’d kept hidden. He was, in that sense, a sun king.

  ‘That time my grandad came to Egypt, he met you, Mr Carter,’ I said, more sure of myself, now. ‘He told me your job was to clear old tombs, and that you helped yourself to any objects that caught your eye.’

  ‘I did no such thing!’ Mr Carter looked horrified.

  I pressed on. ‘The locals didn’t think much of how you went about your business, even then. But you just kept going, doing things your way. And woe betide anyone who stood up to you.’

  ‘How dare you speak to your elders in such a way!’ Lord Carnarvon exclaimed.

  ‘But it’s true,’ I insisted.

  ‘Is it?’ Mr Carter squared up to me. ‘What was he called, this grandad of yours?’

  ‘Ezra Wilkinson,’ I said looking him straight in the eye. ‘And his friend was Professor Selim Hanawati.’

  The angry mask slipped, just for a beat, then it was back, harder than ever. ‘Never heard of either of them,’ he snarled.

  He was lying – badly. But I’d rattled him, which was oh so satisfying. So was the look on Mrs Mendoza’s face: she was taking in every word.

  ‘Before you go, Mr Carter,’ I called out, as he tried to barge past Tulip, ‘we saw you here last night, the four of you breaking into the tomb.’

  There was a gasp. A shaking of heads in the crowd. A few mutterings of ‘Oh I say!’ under people’s breaths. Best of all were the Egyptian officials, one of whom folded his arms in a very satisfied way. The other smoothed his moustache, then took a long breath like he was readying himself for battle.

  Mr Carter himself spun round, furious. ‘Claptrap! We weren’t anywhere near the place! What sort of mother lets you lot run wild in the desert at night? The police should hear about this.’

  ‘And you should’ve had an official from the government with you,’ Oz pointed out. ‘Otherwise, you could’ve stolen more things that no one would ever know about.’

  ‘Indeed, that is the law,’ the moustachioed Egyptian man spoke up. ‘I’m sure Mr Carter is very aware of this fact. Or perhaps he needs a little reminding that he is here at our invitation.’

  By now Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn were looking very agitated indeed. Since it was clear we weren’t budging, they began trying to usher everyone outside.

  Mr Carter glared at Oz: I honestly thought he was going to box his ears.

  ‘Did you take anything, Mr Carter?’ I asked. ‘Because if you did, be warned: there is a curse. It’s not tommyrot, not for a second.’

  He turned his glare on me. Then he roared at the top of his lungs, so loud they must’ve heard him back in Luxor: ‘I WILL NOT BE HELD TO RANSOM BY A GROUP OF CHILDREN!’

  Tulip caught my eye. I smiled. We’d got him, beautifully.

  PART FIVE

  Everywhere, the glint of gold.

  HOWARD CARTER, ARCHAEOLOGIST

  22

  The very next day, Mr Carter decided to ‘put the record straight’. He offered Mrs Mendoza and Alex an exclusive interview, the only condition being that no children should be present. I was very glad to hear it: frankly, I’d had enough of his stories. In a hired room at the Winter Palace, Mr Carter came clean about what he called their ‘preliminary viewing’ of the tomb that night. He had, without meaning to, put a piece of ancient plasterwork in his jacket pocket. But that was all accounted for now, no harm done.

  I imagined Mrs Mendoza and Alex furiously writing all this down in their notebooks. They were certainly pretty thrilled with their final story, which was wired not to Mr Pemberton at the Washington Post but to the Cairo Gazette. An Egyptian story deserved an Egyptian publication, Mrs Mendoza said.

  Neither Lord Carnarvon nor Lady Evelyn took part in the interview. The exclusive deal they were pushing for was with The Times. According to Pepe, though, the real reason was that Mr Carter and Lord Carnarvon had been arguing over how best to clear the tomb.

  All their good fortune came at a price.

  You see, nobody, not even Mr Carter, had expected the tomb to be so jammed full of treasure. Bizarrely, by being such a rushed, un-royal-looking grave, Tutankhamun’s official resting place had remained untouched like no other tomb before it – not even Kyky’s. Mr Carter was very confident that when they opened the inner chamber, they’d find the young pharaoh’s remains intact.

  We kept quiet about that.

  Suffice to say the story in the Cairo Gazette made life difficult for Mr Carter. The call for more Egyptian involvement in the dig grew, and Mr Carter, stubborn as the donkeys he rode, locked the gate on the dig and declared the excavation season over until spring. Things were definitely not going to plan. Or, as Pepe put it, ‘Tutankhamun’s curse has turned its sights on Mr Carter at last.’

  *

  When Mrs Mendoza announced it was time for us to go home, I was both excited and apprehensive. I’d had no more news about Grandad, so I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d find when I got to London. There were farewells to say, to three old friends now together in their little clifftop tomb, and to three new ones – Pepe, Charlie and Chaplin, who’d made me think about many things, including camels, in a whole different light. Tulip sobbed like a baby saying goodbye to Chaplin.

  ‘I’ll write,’ she promised him. The look on Pepe’s face was a picture.

  On our very last evening, when everyone else had gone to bed, I stayed up on deck by myself. As I lay there, listening to the river lapping gently against the boat’s hull, I heard a rustling coming from the reeds on the riverbank. I sat up just in time to see a dog creep to the water’s edge. It was only a couple of feet away. Close enough to touch.

  I could see it wasn’t a normal dog. It was bigger and quieter than the mangy strays from the town, and its ears stuck up on the top of its head like the Anubis on Kyky’s jar. I wondered if it might be a jackal. I hoped it was – it felt right that it should be, somehow.

  As the jackal started drinking, I kept absolutely still. Then it heard something in the distance and its head went up. It saw me watching it. For the tiniest moment, we stared right at each other, before it turned tail and vanished.

  I’d like to think it was a sign that the gods of ancient Egypt were protecting Kyky. Despite all Mr Carter’s digging and cataloguing, the real Tutankhamun finally was free.

  *

  Six and a half days later we were home. London was upon us all too quickly. In the suburbs we passed acres and acres of new houses being built. After Cairo, the view from the window as we came into St Pancras station was grey, cold, dreary. Yet there were Christmas lights twinkling prettily in all the shops, and a definite cosiness to all the lamp-lit windows and smoking chimney pots. Dear London: how I loved it. I was glad to be back.

  Mrs Mendoza had wired ahead to say we were returning. And there they were, both Mum and Dad, waiting at the ticket barrier. They had on their best coats and hats, and their faces when they saw me coming made me well up with tears. I hesitated, though, when I spotted who else was there with them, wrapped up against the cold. Though he looked small and pale, it was definitely an improvement on when I’d last seen him in a hospital bed. Besides, I’d have known those twinkling blue eyes anywhere.

  ‘Grandad!’

  I ran the last few yards, suitcase thumping against my leg. Grandad reached out his arms and I went straight into them. I buried my face deep into his coat. He smelled of old things and
Nefertiti.

  ‘Oh, Lily!’ He hugged me tightly, drew away to look at me, hugged me again. Hands patted my shoulders; I heard Mum say my name, then Dad clear his throat. We were all having a bit of a cry.

  There were more hugs, hands being shaken as the Mendozas joined us at the barrier. In the hustle and bustle of it all, I noticed Grandad go very still. He’d been pale before, but now the colour completely went from his face. I panicked, thinking he was about to collapse or something.

  ‘Do you need to sit down?’ I asked him.

  But, it wasn’t that he was ill: he’d seen someone behind me, over my shoulder. I turned around, and there was Alex, looking every bit as startled himself.

  23

  Just because we’d broken the curse didn’t mean the world made sense again. If anything, for a while at least, life got more complicated. One thing we did agree on was that St Pancras station with a ticket barrier wedged between us wasn’t the place to discuss it, so we all went back to Grandad’s instead.

  As usual, we were greeted by Nefertiti, and a hallway full of carpets and boxes. Yet instead of taking us straight into the shop, Grandad ushered us upstairs to the front parlour. The last time he’d used this room was in 1918 when the war ended, so I knew he had something really important to tell us, which gave me the jitters all over again.

  ‘I think everyone should sit down,’ he said.

  Wiping off the layers of dust, we perched on what chairs or stools we could find. Oz, who’d taken an immediate liking to Nefertiti, sat with her on the floor. From a drawer, Grandad took out an envelope with photographs inside, which Mrs Mendoza seemed to recognise straight away.

  ‘That’s my writing,’ she cried in alarm.

  Grandad placed a hand on his chest. ‘I’m Ezra Wilkinson,’ he explained. ‘You’ve been sending me pictures of my grandson all these years.’