The Parliament of Blood

by Justin Richards

  They cut through the courtyard and back into the Museum. Ahead of him, George could see Eddie at the main doors, which were standing slightly open. Wisps of fog were curling round the frame and edging into the Museum. George caught up with Eddie and helped him pull the doors open fully. Outside, the night was grey smudged with vague lights from the street and nearby buildings.

  In the murk ahead of them, George could make out a figure – pale, lurching its way out of the Museum gates and on to the street outside.

  ‘Come on!’ Eddie shouted, haring down the steps. George was close behind him – they were almost there. ‘We’ve got him!’

  The carriage seemed to erupt out of the fog, clattering past George and Eddie and after the pale figure stumbling slowly along the pavement. A strip of cloth trailed from one leg. The carriage slowed, and the door on the pavement side swung open. Black in the grey fog. George could just make out a design painted on the door – a shape, a device. Like the gold ornament round the mummy’s neck, only in scarlet. A cross, with the top bar replaced by a loop. An ‘ankh’, Brinson had called it.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Eddie muttered.

  But no one got out of the carriage. Instead, the bizarre figure on the pavement turned and climbed inside.

  ‘Quick!’ George shouted, realising they were about to lose their quarry. But he was too late. The door was already closing. A fog-muffled whip-crack spurred the horses into motion and the carriage clattered away.

  George and Eddie kept running. But the carriage was fading into the fog. Its shape was indistinct, then it was gone, swallowed up by the grey night.

  ‘That settles it,’ Eddie said. He slowed to a halt, head down and hands on knees as he gasped for breath. ‘No one who’s thousands of years old could have a blooming cab waiting.’

  It wasn’t until Henry Malvern clapped his hands together, laughed, and declared it was the most impressive piece of theatre he had seen for a long while that Liz realised it must all be an act.

  She looked round for Sir William, and saw he was deep in conversation with a tall, important-looking man. There was no sign of either George or Eddie.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said, picking up on his earlier comment, ‘a most impressive piece of acting even in my rather less experienced opinion.’

  ‘You have some experience of the theatre?’ Malvern said. ‘I’m sorry, I do apologise, I did not catch your name – Miss …?’

  ‘Miss Oldfield.’ She felt her heart quicken at the attention.

  Malvern’s mouth opened slightly, as if in recognition. ‘Of course.’ He nodded. ‘Tell me, Miss Oldfield, do you have a relative in holy orders? An uncle, perhaps? Or …’

  ‘My father,’ Liz exclaimed in surprise. ‘He is all but retired now. You know him?’

  ‘Not really. Our paths happened to cross some years ago. I doubt he would remember me.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Liz said, ‘I shall remember you to my father.’

  ‘Please do not bother yourself, or him.’ Malvern’s smile became a slight frown. ‘We met only briefly. At a religious ceremony some years ago.’ The smile returned. ‘As I recall, he was somewhat disapproving of the theatre.’

  ‘He has not mellowed in his opinion,’ Liz confessed.

  ‘But you mentioned that you have some interest in the art of performance. Can I take it that you do not share your father’s feelings on the subject?’

  ‘Indeed not.’ Realising she had said this rather emphatically, Liz quickly added: ‘I respect his opinions of course. But no, I do not share them. In fact, though my father would be somewhat annoyed if he found out, I very much enjoy the theatre and am a member of a small acting group that meets at the Chistleton Theatre.’

  ‘Are you a good actress, Miss Oldfield?’

  The boldness of the question, along with the scrutiny of Malvern’s deep, dark eyes unsettled Liz. ‘Goodness, that isn’t for me to say. But Mr Jessop seems to think that I have some small talent. I haven’t taken any leading roles, but that is partly because I need to look after Father and cannot always guarantee to be available.’

  Malvern nodded slowly. ‘I think perhaps you are unduly modest, Miss Oldfield. I pride myself on being a good judge and I would say that you most definitely have a stage presence.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  Malvern laughed at her enthusiasm. ‘I am sure of it.’

  Liz took a deep breath. ‘Thank you. You have no idea how much I value your opinion, just as I respect and envy your own talent, Mr Malvern.’ Slightly overwhelmed by the way the conversation had gone, Liz needed some fresh air and she was aware of how late it must be. ‘If you will excuse me, I should be getting back home to Father.’

  ‘Indeed. I have much to do myself. We are rehearsing for a new production of Camille. Do you know it?’

  ‘By Dumas,’ Liz said automatically. ‘I have seen it, yes. A very sad play.’

  ‘About a woman who is full of life. And death.’ Malvern rubbed his chin as he considered. ‘There is something …’ He hesitated, then went on: ‘I wonder, Miss Oldfield, perhaps you would care to see a rehearsal at the Parthenon?’

  ‘I would find that most instructive,’ Liz said, surprised at the offer. ‘And I should like it very much.’

  ‘Then, please, feel free to visit. We rehearse every evening this week and next, from six o’clock. And I must be getting back to see how they have fared without me tonight.’

  Without realising, Liz had allowed Malvern to take her arm and walk her to the top of the stairs.

  ‘May I find you a cab?’ Malvern was asking. ‘Or do you have other arrangements?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her mouth dry and her face flushed. ‘A cab will be fine. Thank you.’

  When George left for work in the morning, Eddie left for school. But, whereas George always went to work, Eddie did not always go to school.

  The teacher did not seem to mind when Eddie was absent. In fact, from the way Eddie was told off and shouted at when he was there, he imagined the teacher was as happy as Eddie on those days when he did not put in an appearance.

  Eddie felt he had made an effort. After all he could read (a bit) and write (just about) and do his sums (with money anyway). So there did not seem to be an awful lot of point in actually going to school, other than to keep George and Sir William happy.

  Which was why he told neither of them that he rarely went. That just wouldn’t be fair on them. Though if they knew how Eddie was helping them this cold, February morning, they would be impressed, he decided.

  He met the others round the back of the workhouse. The workhouse children that weren’t too old were supposed to go to school as well. Most of them did, but there were a few who avoided school, like Eddie. There were others who were skiving off whatever work the work-house master Mr Pearce had set them.

  The building was made of dark brick, with small arched windows covered with iron bars. Rising into the cold pale light of the morning and silhouetted against the weak sun, it looked like a medieval fortress. From what the children had told him, Eddie thought it was about as inviting and comfortable. Every time he saw it, he gave thanks for the series of events that had brought him to George Archer’s house rather than here.

  Certainly, Eddie had more in common with the work-house kids than he did with most of the children in his class at the elementary school. Eddie could have been one of them as he leaned against the back wall of the building. There was Charlie, who was about the same age as Eddie with an untidy mop of sandy-coloured hair, and Jack who had stopped going to school so much when he got bullied. Despite that, Jack was always grinning, no matter what happened. Charlie said that Jack grinned even when Mr Pearce the workhouse master was beating him. Then there was Mikey who never said anything and was rumoured to be deaf too, though no one knew for sure, and Eve – the only girl. Her hair was cut just as short as the boys’, which she hated. She was all right, was Eve.

  In fact, they were all good mates, Eddie thought. There used
to be more of them, but children seemed to drift away from the workhouse, often without any goodbye or even a hint they were thinking of moving on. Like Charlie’s best mate Josh who just left one night. Or little Florence who had seemed to be such a friend to Eve – one morning she just wasn’t there any more. As he spoke, Eddie looked round at his friends, knowing that tomorrow any one of them might have moved on to try their meagre luck elsewhere …

  Mikey was sitting cross-legged on the ground, picking up bits of gravel and dropping them again. The others were listening intently to Eddie’s story. He had just reached the part where the mummy escaped from the British Museum and lurched off into the foggy night.

  ‘So this mummy thing, what, came back to life?’ Charlie said.

  ‘You’re making it up,’ Jack muttered.

  ‘I’m not,’ Eddie assured them. ‘Anyway, what we reckon is that it wasn’t a mummy at all. Just someone pretending.’

  ‘So, who was he?’ Eve asked. She sounded like she wasn’t that bothered, but her eyes were gleaming with interest.

  ‘Yeah, did the peelers take him away and lock him up?’ Charlie asked enthusiastically.

  ‘No, because we didn’t catch him. We gave him a good chase, but it had all been planned out, you see and there was a carriage waiting. I thought it was a cab, but then as the door opened and the mummy bloke got in, I saw there was this design on the door. Like you see a coat of arms on posh carriage doors sometimes. Only it was just a shape. Like this.’ He crouched down and drew in the dust on the ground with his finger – the shape of the ankh engraved on the carriage door.

  ‘Never seen anything like that before,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Me neither,’ Jack agreed.

  Even Mikey was shaking his head.

  ‘You want us to let you know if we see a carriage with that on it?’ Eve asked.

  ‘I want more than that,’ Eddie said. ‘This could be really important.’

  ‘So?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘So, I want you, and anyone else you can get to help, to go looking. Maybe we can find this carriage and discover who it belongs to. Maybe we can help solve the mystery of the mummy.’

  Eve sniffed. ‘What’s in it for us?’

  Eddie shrugged. ‘Dunno. Thruppence. Sixpence maybe. Depends if we find the carriage.’

  Eve nodded. ‘Better get started, then.’

  ‘Better get running, then,’ Charlie said urgently. ‘Pearce is coming.’

  As he spoke a man appeared round the end of the building. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and with a large beer belly. His face was twisted into a malevolent leer and he was hefting a wooden cudgel in one beefy hand. When he caught sight of the children, his expression became even more unpleasant and he smacked the cudgel into the palm of his free hand.

  ‘What are you lot doing hanging round here?’ he demanded. His voice sounded like the gravel that Mikey was playing with. ‘Should be at school or working, not loitering.’

  ‘Scarper,’ Charlie hissed.

  They ran, as fast as they could, as Pearce approached. Mikey reacted most slowly, getting to his feet at last and turning to follow his friends. But Pearce lumbered forwards, grabbed Mikey’s coat and dragged him back. He raised the cudgel.

  ‘I’ll learn you to muck about here when you should be getting schooled.’

  But as he tried to bring down the cudgel on the cowering Mikey, he found his arm held tight from behind.

  ‘Pick on someone your own size,’ Eddie told the big man, struggling to hold back the cudgel.

  It was not a struggle Eddie could win. Pearce was twisting round and wrenching the cudgel free.

  ‘Run!’ Eddie shouted at Mikey.

  Whether Mikey could hear or not, he understood – and he ran.

  Eddie stepped away as Pearce walked slowly towards him. He felt the rough, cold brickwork against his back and knew he was up against the wall.

  ‘Why should I pick on someone my own size,’ Pearce said menacingly, ‘when I’ve got you?’

  ‘Have you?’ Eddie was inching along the wall. As he felt the corner of the building behind him, he turned on his heel. ‘Got to catch me first, Fatso!’

  With Pearce’s shout of rage echoing off the brick buildings, Eddie ran full pelt after his friends.

  ‘I wonder if I could presume on your time for a little while?’ Sir William asked.

  George had spent the morning finishing his cataloguing work from the day before. Sir William had already been at work when George arrived, sitting in his office leafing through a large dusty book with a faded cloth cover. He had spared George a glance and a ‘Good morning’ and George had left him in peace.

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  Without further comment, Sir William turned and led the way through the archive, past specimen cabinets and shelves and tables and through one of the doorless openings into the rooms beyond. For George, this was uncharted territory. Almost a third of the enormous space they entered was taken up with crates and boxes filled with items that Sir William or his predecessor had already catalogued and stored away.

  At last they arrived in front of a large crate. It was open, and whatever had been inside had been removed, leaving only the crushed straw that had protected it.

  ‘What was …?’ George began to ask. But then he realised, from the size of the crate and the shape of the hollow in the straw packing. ‘The sarcophagus.’

  Sir William nodded. ‘Came from this crate, yes. Lord Ruthven and his Royal Society colleagues were insistent, though I have no idea why. They maintain it is because the mummy was of no consequence, and would not be missed. Whereas it would be a shame to have to unwrap a specimen from the official collection. There might be complaints.’

  ‘It was a shame to have to unwrap a mummy at all,’ George said. ‘If there ever was one. Before that prankster, whoever it was, took the mummy’s place.’

  ‘You think it was some sort of prank, then?’

  ‘What else?’ George laughed. ‘A real, ancient Egyptian mummy is hardly likely to get up and wander off now, is it?’ He hesitated, seeing that Sir William’s expression was still as grave as ever. ‘Is it?’ he asked again, less sure now.

  ‘It does seem most improbable,’ Sir William admitted. ‘And the fellow had a carriage waiting. I hardly think he could have arranged that while inside a sarcophagus that was itself first buried for thousands of years and then nailed up in this crate for the past few decades.’ He reached inside the crate and pulled at the straw, as if to check that the real mummy was not still concealed inside. ‘It is a shame the photographer did not come back.’

  ‘You think photographs of the chap might help identify him?’

  ‘By a process of comparison, perhaps. You see, when I opened this crate yesterday morning, there was most certainly a genuine mummy resting inside at that time.’

  ‘So any substitution took place in the afternoon.’

  ‘The evening,’ Sir William corrected him. ‘In the afternoon, I arranged for the photographer, Mr Denning, to photograph the mummy.’

  ‘Before the Unwrapping?’

  ‘It seemed sensible and prudent to keep a record of that which was about to be destroyed. Now, if we could compare the photographs Denning took with our memories of how the mummy appeared last night, we might be able to identify something from the photographs, some change.’

  ‘If this Denning turns up.’

  ‘Oh we shall find him.’ Sir William turned, the light glinting on his round spectacles. ‘But that isn’t why I wanted you here.’

  ‘Then, why?’

  Sir William turned towards another crate that was beside the open one. This crate was also wooden, old and battered. It was smaller than the first crate, and square rather than rectangular – a cube about four feet along each side. Sir William patted the top of it with the flat of his hand, and was rewarded with a puff of dust that hung in the air like smoke.

  ‘Now this crate is catalogued in the inventory as 57E2.’
r />   ‘And what is inside it?’ George wondered.

  ‘I have no idea. There is a number in the inventory, and also on the top of the crate.’ He pointed to where the number was stencilled. ‘But that number is described as simply “Casket”. My predecessor, the late Xavier Hemming, was meticulous in his records, so I find it odd that he entered such a vague description.’

  ‘He was instrumental in establishing this department, wasn’t he?’ George recalled. ‘Did you ever meet him?’

  Sir William seemed not to hear. ‘The crate with the sarcophagus was properly catalogued. That is how we found it. After some preliminary remarks about how Hemming came by the artefact, the description reads, as I recall: “Silver-lined sarcophagus from ancient Egypt c. 2000 BC. Contains mummified remains of Orabis (see document 56E19).”

  ‘And that document explains who this Orabis was?’

  Sir William sniffed. ‘That document does not exist. Not in the inventory, not on the shelves. No such number.’ He turned back to the square crate. ‘But the inventory number for the mummy and sarcophagus is 57E1. A connection perhaps? Related artefacts?’

  ‘You think the missing document might be in that crate?’ George wondered. ‘It’s very big.’

  ‘There is only one way to find out what’s inside,’ Sir William said. ‘Perhaps it is a document, perhaps a casket, perhaps something else. Perhaps whatever is inside will explain why the wise and clever Xavier Hemming believed that what seemed to be a perfectly ordinary and well-preserved Egyptian mummy deserved a place in the archives of the Department of Unclassified Artefacts.’

  ‘Unless he knew Orabis was going to rise from the dead,’ George said with a smile.

  Again Sir William fixed him with a serious look. ‘Don’t think I haven’t considered that,’ he said. ‘Now, I shall wait here while you find something to prise open this crate.’

  There was a crowbar lying on top of one of the other crates nearby, and George assumed it had been left there from when the crate containing the mummy of Orabis had been opened. He eased the end of the crowbar beneath the wooden lid of the square crate and pushed down heavily on the other end. He could feel the wood straining against the nails. Then with a squeal, several of the nails pulled free of the wood and the lid lifted.