The Book of the Dead (15 page)

Seeing this action, the un-werewolf decided on self-preservation and charged past him up the steps.

The flammable liquid caught easily, the fire quickly spreading to burn away happily at the wooden furniture and textiles scattered about. From the amount of smoke and flames flaring up from within the sarcophagus, Alessandro had no doubt the mummy was ablaze as well. He whirled and ran up the stairs and out of the tomb, coughing delicately.

Outside, things were not as they should be. The un-werewolf was getting away, dangling precariously off the edge of the gondola of a hot-air balloon, floating upwards. A tubby sort of personage was manning the balloon’s thermotransmitter and cranking up the hydrodine engine to get a steering propeller moving – a familiar tubby sort of personage, wearing a long scarf wrapped about his throat.

“Why, Sir Percival. I see you
do
own more than one item of neck wear.”

“What ho, Mr. Tarabotti? Sad business, this. I did so hope it wasn’t you.”

“Working for the Crown, are we, Phlinkerlington? How menial.”

“For the Glory of the Empire, Mr. Tarabotti. Can’t expect a Templar’s toady to understand. Now can I?” As he spoke, the baronet succeeded in getting the propeller in motion, and then waddled over to assist the un-werewolf in flopping, fishlike, into the safety of the gondola.

The balloon began to rise upwards, its propeller whirling mighty gusts of steam. Soon it would be at sufficient height to set a steady course back to Luxor.

Alessandro flicked the air with the back of his hand, gesturing the men away as if they were mere irritations that had been bothering his evening’s stroll.

No record and no witnesses.

He searched around his feet for a sharp fragment of limestone. The blaze from the lower part of the tomb had extended into the open room at the top. It lit the ridge-side on which he stood with flickering orange. It seemed the dust, itself, was flammable, and fresh air only encouraged the conflagration. He could hear the faint “poof” sound of limestone spalling in the heat.

He found a rock of adequate size. There was enough room on the hillside for him to run up his speed. Not exactly the perfect cricket pitch, but, then, one couldn’t be too picky about such things. Mr. Tarabotti may have been born Italian, but he
had
bowled for New College, and been widely regarded as one of the fastest on record. The stone hit the balloon perfectly, tearing through the oiled canvas right above the engine feed, with immediate and catastrophic results.

The hot gas leaked out, deflating the balloon from one side and causing the whole contraption to list dramatically. The un-werewolf let out a howl of mixed anger and distress and Sir Percival swore, but there was nothing either man could do to salvage the situation. Moments later the balloon burst into flames, falling to the ground with a thudding crash.

Mr. Tarabotti paused to light a cheroot with one of his remaining phosphorus matches and then walked towards the wreckage.

Both men were lying face down in the sand. Mr. Tarabotti turned the un-werewolf over with his foot, puffing softly. Definitely dead. Then he heard a small moan.

“Still alive, Phinkerlington?” He pulled out his garrotte and tossed the end of the cheroot away.

No record and no witnesses.

The fallen baronet turned his head weakly and looked at Mr. Tarabotti.

“Looking less and less likely, Sandy my man,” he croaked. “Nice bowl, by-the-by, perfectly aimed and you even got a bit of spin on it.”

“I do what I can.” Alessandro crouched over the fallen man and reached forward with the garrotte.

The baronet coughed, blood leaked out the side of his mouth. “No need, Sandy old chap, no need. Do me a bit of a turn, would you? For old Eustace’s sake, if not mine.”

Mr. Tarabotti sat back on his heels, surprised.

“See Leticia safely home to England, would you? Doesn’t know a thing about this business, I assure you. She’s only a slip of a thing, good chit, really, can’t have her wandering about Egypt on her lonesome. You understand?”

Mr. Tarabotti considered. He’d have had to investigate the girl anyway. This gave him a good excuse to find out what she knew. He’d be terribly, terribly understanding and sympathetic. Tragic accident in the desert. What were they thinking, floating at night? He’d been out for a stroll and saw the balloon fall from afar. Dashed to the rescue but wasn’t in time to save anyone. Old friend of the family, of course he’d be happy to escort her home.

Percival Phinkerlington’s watery eyes bored into him. Alessandro pursed his lips and nodded curtly. The baronet sighed, closing his eyes. The sigh turned into a wet rattling gurgle, and then silence.

Alessandro Tarabotti lit another small cheroot off the burning balloon basket. What
would
he put in his report to the Templars? Such an incommodious bit of business. A dead un-werewolf was one thing, but a dead British aristocrat? He sighed, puffing out smoke. They’d not be pleased. Not pleased at all.
And the mummy.
Did his superiors need to know the truth of the mummy? For the truth was, that was no wolf’s head at all. Alessandro Tarabotti had killed enough werewolves to know the difference, emaciated or fully fleshed. No, it had been far more dog-like, small, pointed.
A jackal, perhaps?

He smoked his cigar. On the walls of that burning tomb, the jackal-headed god, Anubis, had been depicted assisting a jackal-headed man into the afterlife.

Werejackals? Surely not.

Alessandro snorted. But some twinge of fancy reminded him of the un-werewolf’s words.
They worshipped us as gods.
And Ancient Egyptian gods had
other
animal heads. Lots of other animal heads. No wonder the Templars wanted to keep such information out of British hands.

Mr. Tarabotti turned to commence his long walk back to Luxor. Baronet Phinkerlington might be dead, but Alessandro had to escort Miss Phinkerlington back to England and deal with a mess of paperwork as a result. He wondered which one of them had got the better deal out of the arrangement. Probably Phinkerlington.

“The plundering of the cemetery was a sight to see, but one had to stand well windward. The village children came and provided themselves with the most attractive mummies they could find. These they took down the river bank to sell for the smallest coin to passing travellers. The path became strewn with mummy cloth and bits of cats’ skulls and bones and fur in horrid positions, and the wind blew the fragments about and carried the stink afar.”

– William Martin Conway, on the breaking of the tomb at Beni Hasan

There are few academics without their eccentricities. For some reason, perhaps due to the particular demands of their profession, there are even fewer Egyptologists without such foibles. Perhaps it’s all the time spent in temples with only animal-headed statues for company – perhaps it’s the accumulated years of pointing at the ibis, the owl and the pair of disembodied legs and insisting, to perplexed audiences, that there’s language, a meaning even, in those ancient symbols.

Monty was Professor Cricklewood’s eccentricity. He was her beloved beagle. An aged but dignified canine, Monty went everywhere with his mistress and was a favourite of her students, who enjoyed his company during their tutorials in Cricklewood’s office. They especially appreciated the way that Cricklewood’s difficult questions about lost books and late essays could be diverted with a well-timed comment about Monty’s health, or the glossiness of his coat.

However, when Monty and the professor entered the mansion of Doctor Rashid Shenouda, near Beni Hasan, Egypt, the beagle was given cause to ponder that his mistress’s eccentricities were not the most apparent, nor the most inexplicable of her profession.

It was not merely the doctor’s strange instructions regarding their travel, nor the many protective symbols scrawled over the doors as they entered his mansion. Neither was it the way that Rashid took such pains to explain that the ingredients for their supper had been imported from Cairo especially – the eccentricity that truly rivalled any academic of Monty’s acquaintance was the exceedingly large number of cats about the place. They covered almost every surface, from bookshelves to tables to chairs, so that Cricklewood had difficulty finding somewhere, anywhere to sit.

Monty had mixed feelings about cats. On the one hand, they were pleasant conversation, if self-centred. They were well informed on philosophy, astrology and ornithology, and, on the whole, exceedingly well read in the classics. On the other, cats stirred something canine in him, something usually repressed, that made him want to bark and chase and growl.

After supper, when Rashid and Cricklewood were sharing liberal quantities of brandy in the scholar’s nigh-Alexandrian library, Monty and several of the cats were permitted to curl up around the sumptuous armchairs in front of the fire.

Cricklewood being allergic to cats, one of the younger tabbies had unsurprisingly found its way onto her lap, and Monty watched it with a mixture of jealousy and gloom. These days he was too large and heavy for her to tolerate such behaviour for long.

They say that cats always find their way onto the lap of the allergy-stricken, or onto the person who most dislikes feline company. In truth, this is because eye contact between cats is often a sign of aggression. No wonder, then, that cats gravitate towards those who avoid their gaze.

Cricklewood being, though allergic, honestly quite fond of blue-eyed, soft-furred tabby kittens (it behoves us all to be suspicious of anyone who is not) she had neglected to stare too hard at the tiny beast who had filed himself on the shelves in between Herodotus and Homer, successfully tempting him into her lap, a fact of which she was feeling quite triumphant. Therefore it is some testament to her surprise that when, spotting something unexpected upon a higher library shelf, she stood up, launching the poor kitten from her lap, and exclaimed, “Oh! Rashid, whatever are those creatures?”

For up upon a high shelf, above the natural eye line of your average Egyptologist, and quite especially above the natural eye line of your average beagle, were four feline mummies, all in a row, and turned to face the group around the fire.

What had caused Cricklewood to exclaim was not the thought that these mummies, to those of a fanciful nature, might seem to be staring confrontationally at those in the library. It was the disturbing fact that they were to her trained eye quite clearly not ancient Egyptian in origin, but modern mummies.

Cricklewood said as much, but the doctor demurred. “They are only my father’s fancies, like much in this house. Think nothing of it, my dear.”

When pressed, the doctor could only state that Elizabeth, if he could be permitted to call her that, would have to ply him with a good deal more of the fine French brandy sitting between them if she wanted to hear the story, and could he pour her another glass, by any chance?

“That’s a lie, of course,” said an elegant Siamese to Monty, haughtily. “He wrapped the mummies himself.”

“You mean to say,” choked Monty, “That my mistress is sitting here quite happily with the kind of man who dabbles in mummification?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘dabbles’,” teased a ginger tom. “He seems very good at it.”

Monty’s lip was beginning to curl, and he placed himself in between his mistress and Rashid, snarling softly.

“Monty!” admonished Cricklewood. “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

When Monty continued to show his teeth, Cricklewood continued. “Honestly, if you persist in this rudeness towards the dashing doctor, in his own home, no less, you can go up to our room and sleep off this foul mood. Well?”

Faced with the choice between silencing his displeasure or leaving his mistress alone with her suspicious companion, Monty took the sensible action and grudgingly quietened down, turning not once, not twice, but three times before settling, as if to communicate his displeasure at being forced to this action. Cricklewood coaxed the tabby kitten back onto her lap, with an enticing scritching of her nails on the armchair. The kitten pounced, and blinked its blue eyes at Monty.

“He won’t tell her about the mummies,” it purred. “But we can tell you.”

“I had a feeling you might.”

The Siamese coughed self-importantly, and began.

“It started during the time that came afterwards to be known as the lost summer.

“We noticed it first, as cats always do. Animals had started to disappear. First a puppy was lost from the farm just outside town. Then the Hassans’ milking goat disappeared overnight. Everyone began to notice fewer strays about the town, and there were those, of course, that thought this no bad thing.

“The first human child to go missing belonged to a poor traveller passing through the town. She begged for someone to find her little girl, but no-one knew where to start. Nobody cared much to try, but when the child of a foreign teacher disappeared from his bed, and then the mayor’s sister lost her little girl, the mayor ordered a curfew for the town.

“The good doctor Rashid at this time was barely more than a kitten himself, barely even half the full-grown size for a human. Since the arrival of his mother, the house had always been a haven for our species, and though she had died young, and his father was often away studying old tombs, Rashid had never been lonely, for he always had his feline companions.

“We allowed him to stroke our fur, as humans enjoy it so, and we played along when the boy believed that ribbons and woollen balls were rodents, and chased them to please him.”

Monthy looked dubious.

“Well I don’t expect a dog to understand,” a black cat scoffed. “Why would you? His favourite was my own ancestor, Hunts-the-Black-Beetles. She was an expert at catching ribbon-rats, and every night she slept on the boy’s bed. When she had her first litter that year, she had honoured him and him alone with the knowledge of where they were birthed, in the temple ruins not far from this house, where the stray cats lived and where, no doubt, the kitten’s father was to be found.”

Monty nodded, this he did understand. Mother cats in his experience were exceptionally secretive, and awkward, about where they nursed their kittens. He remembered the chaos that had erupted when the Dean’s cat had been found nesting in the Cook’s larder, having decided that the college kitchens with their warm stoves and ready access to Cook’s best ham were the logical place to bring new life into the world.

The Siamese continued. “Hunts-the-Black-Beetles’ three kittens were growing up well, and Rashid was as curious about them as they were about him. He taught them his games and they showed him theirs, while their mother looked on with love. But one evening that summer, the kittens were gone.”

“Gone?” Monty’s tail went between his legs.

“Gone. Hunts-the-Black-Beetles and the boy began to search for them, first throughout the house, then the grounds and fields where the kittens liked to play. Then cat and boy headed to the place where the kittens were born, reasoning, in all likelihood, that they may have returned to a place they knew if they had come across trouble.

“When Shenouda was told by his son’s governess that Rashid could not be found, and must be deliberately avoiding his bed-time, he was concerned. Assured that the staff had searched the house, Shenouda went to the tombs, knowing that Rashid liked to play there, though likely attributing it to an inherited interest in their country’s history rather than the boy’s love of his feline companions.

“That place was the temple of Bubastis, discovered by a farmer only a few years earlier. Beni Hasan had become famous, for a time, as rich tourists and historians alike turned up to see (and cover their noses at) the thousands of small mummies carted from the tomb – mostly feline, but some dogs, foxes and smaller carnivores were among them too. Although several were sold to museums, and private collectors, mummies being in vogue in Europe at the time, many were lost to theft, the prettier specimens sold as market souvenirs and the vast majority ground up for fertiliser or for medicinal purposes – humans having little practical use for the literal tonnes of mummified corpses discovered there.

“The hieroglyphics and paintings on the walls of the tomb were still a worthy study – and one of the reasons Shenouda had moved his household and young wife to Beni Hasan. Now that the boy’s only memories of his mother were in this place, his father didn’t have the heart to move elsewhere.

“Lighting a candle on his way into the temple, Shenouda must have noted, with a little relief, that the paintings were still intact. He had half-expected the ever-resourceful tomb robbers – perhaps financed by the European museums – to find some way to transport these overseas also. But considering his reasons for entering the temple, his relief would have been short-lived, as he pondered the curfew and recent disappearances. Where to search next if the boy was not here? When to get the authorities, such as they were, involved?

“Shenouda tried to make his way to the main chambers of the temple – though several times he was turned about by the placement of the murals being not quite what he expected from his earlier studies, and by swift movements that could have been his boy but were only the long shadows dancing, panther-like, on the walls.

“In the light of his candle he saw a bundle in a shadowed corner, and fearing the worst, ran to it. But although the body was boy-sized, it was not human-shaped, and on inspection turned out to be a well-preserved, almost mummified, goat carcass. Shenouda had no more time to wonder at that, nor at why the temple’s plentiful stray cats had not gorged themselves on goat suppers, before he heard Rashid’s voice drifting through the temple.

“He followed the sound, and came upon a large chamber where Rashid was stroking a ginger and white patched cat, watched by his beloved pet, and pleading with the many strays assembled.

“‘Have you seen Blackie’s kittens? There are three of them, all boys, like me.’

“‘Rashid! What the hell are you doing here?’ The boy and the black cat turned to him, wide-eyed, and the other cats scattered away. ‘Have you forgotten the curfew? Come home before you catch fleas.’

“‘But Father, Blackie’s kittens are lost. We cannot leave without them.’

“‘You’ll do what I tell you, boy.’ Shenouda lunged for his son, catching him by the arm but sending Blackie shooting into a corner, to hide behind a broken statue. Knowing that leaving her behind would only cause him more trouble, Shenouda let go of his son and went for the cat.

“‘What the–?’ he drew back, shocked by what he saw.

“There, hidden behind the statue, was the body of a young girl. Her skin was dry and papery, her cheeks sunken and her lips drawn back from her teeth in an attitude common to that of the mummies that Shenouda studied.

“Her richly-woven dress and beautiful, curly black hair marked her out as the mayor’s niece – Shenouda had dined with the family on more than one occasion. It was the dress she’d worn when she had gone missing the month before, but the body seemed too far gone for that.

“‘Don’t look, boy.’ But Rashid was standing behind him, open mouthed, that damn black cat somehow already scooped up in his arms.

“‘It’s time to go now, Rashid.’ The boy did not argue.

“But Shenouda could not find the way out of the temple – only dead ends where exits should be, and further grisly discoveries, dead dogs and cats in the same mummified state.

“The temple’s cats, who had followed their progress, stopped to sniff sadly at the feline corpses. Their shadows were small and furtive on the walls, nothing like the large panther shapes which still danced at the edge of Shenouda’s vision.

“A mewling cry rang out ahead of the small group, and was suddenly cut short. Rashid darted from his father’s grasping hands and ran ahead, Blackie jumping from his arms.

“Shenouda and the other cats followed, finding themselves in a second large chamber. A woman stood in the centre, suffused with an unearthly green glow. She held a struggling black kitten, and there were two other tiny, stiff furry bodies around her on the ground.

“Shenouda recognised the woman – the beggar who’d lost her daughter.”