The Mummy Smugglers of Crumblin Castle

by Pamela Rushby

  “I certainly hope so, sir,” Hattie replied.

  “I’m sure you will! But for now, I’d like to introduce your great-aunt to some of my guests. And I’m sure you’d like some cake.” He beckoned to the footman. “Thomas! Please ensure the young lady has plenty of cake.”

  “What sort of cake do you like, miss?” Thomas asked, as Lord Arelsford and Great-aunt Iphigenia moved away.

  “All sorts,” said Hattie truthfully.

  Thomas grinned. Then he kept Hattie so well supplied with cake that by the time the party moved to the adjoining room for Great-aunt Iphigenia’s unwrapping demonstration, she felt very full, and hoped she wouldn’t disgrace herself by dozing off. She need not have been concerned. From Great-aunt Iphigenia’s first words, Hattie was riveted.

  The audience seated themselves in a buzz of anticipation, a rustling of silks and satins and a fluttering of fans. As Hattie moved towards a seat at the front, the Ravens materialised beside her.

  “Stay at the back,” Edgar Raven hissed to Hattie.

  “And keep quiet,” added Edwina Raven.

  Hattie glared at them. She didn’t need to be told to keep quiet. But how much would she see at the back? She wanted to see it all! Fortunately, Thomas the footman was by now an ally. He carefully repositioned Hattie’s chair to the side, where she could see everything. Hattie smiled at him gratefully.

  The Ravens had moved up to stand close to Great-aunt Iphigenia, ready to assist her. Great-aunt Iphigenia stood behind the mummy case, now unwrapped in all its colourful glory, and gazed out over the expectant audience, waiting for silence.

  “Some of you may be well aware of the Egyptian practice of mummification,” she began. “However, for those who are not, I will briefly describe it.” She paused and folded her hands. There was complete silence in the room.

  “The Egyptians mummified their dead because they believed that a person’s body needed to be preserved in order to ensure their existence in the afterlife. According to Herodotus, a Greek traveller and writer, there were three methods of mummification. The method that was employed depended on the means of the dead person’s family. This mummy case, clearly of high quality,” she waved her hand over the mummy case, “contains the body of a person who would have been mummified using the most expensive method. Shall I describe how it was done?”

  The audience nodded eagerly.

  “Well, then. Usually, the internal organs – the stomach, liver, lungs and intestines – were removed through an incision in the left side of the body. They would be mummified separately from the body and stored in special jars, called canopic jars. The heart, however, would be left in the body. The brain would then be removed by inserting hooked instruments up the nose and extracting the brain tissue – dragging it out, in fact.”

  How fascinating, Hattie thought, even if it was a little – graphic.

  It was clearly too graphic for some members of the audience. Great-aunt Iphigenia paused as a woman in the audience rose, swayed on her feet, and was escorted out by the man sitting next to her, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth.

  Hattie waited impatiently for the explanation to continue. How inconvenient that some people could not see how totally absorbing all this was!

  “As I said, the brain was removed. The body cavity would be cleaned and packed with linen, then the body would be covered in a type of salt, called natron, and left to dry out for a period of forty days. At the end of that time, it was uncovered, washed, and rubbed with sweet-smelling herbs and spices, and wrapped in yards and yards of linen strips, with amulets and charms slipped into the wrappings from time to time. The result is what we will see before us today. The inscriptions have revealed that this is the mummy case of a man named Nebamun.”

  She surveyed the audience. “Are there any questions before we begin the unwrapping? No? Very well, then.”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia motioned to the Ravens. They stepped forward and, with some difficulty, levered the lid of the mummy case open. They lifted the lid off and placed it carefully against the wall behind them, then they reached into the case and lifted out the mummy itself, long and thin and covered in a layer of greyish linen wrappings. The audience sucked in their breaths, with audible hisses. It sounded, Hattie thought, as if she was sitting in a roomful of snakes.

  The Ravens laid the mummy on the table and stepped back to remove the bottom of the mummy case, also leaning it against the wall.

  Great-aunt Iphigenia bent over the mummy, inspecting it rapidly. Gently, she began to remove the outer linen wrappings. The Ravens assisted, lifting the mummy when necessary, and taking away the unrolled linen. Hattie regarded them with envy. She would love to be so near, to be able to see the mummy close-up for herself.

  “I see that the underlying layers of linen have been coated with resin,” observed Great-aunt Iphigenia. “This was done for preservation purposes, and has set hard, so I shall have to cut through the inner layers to reach the body.”

  Edwina Raven handed Great-aunt Iphigenia a pair of large, shining, wicked-looking shears, and the audience gasped again.

  Great-aunt Iphigenia rapidly applied the shears to the length of the mummy’s wrappings with business-like slices. The audience leaned forward in fascination as she laid the shears down, peeled back the wrappings along the cut she had made, and bent over to inspect her work. A dark, thin body lay exposed on the table, arms stretched stiffly by its sides, the skin of the face and head shrunken, lips drawn back to expose the teeth, eyes partly closed with a hint of blue visible between the lids.

  A sigh of sheer awe lifted like a cloud from the audience.

  “And here is our first surprise,” announced Great-aunt Iphigenia. “The mummy case inscriptions led me to believe this would be the body of a man, Nebamun. But in fact –” she paused for effect. “In fact, this is the mummy of a woman.”

  Ooohhhh! the audience murmured.

  Hattie leaned forward, totally riveted. Really?

  “Is that very unusual?” asked a man. “For the mummy case to contain the wrong person?”

  “Unusual, but far from unknown,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. She was busy with sharp silver instruments, but looked up to answer his question. “I have seen several mummies that were not of the expected gender.”

  “Why is that?” a woman asked.

  “We can only suppose that the deaths were unexpected, and that what was on hand and convenient was used,” replied Great-aunt Iphigenia. “Or that the mummies were later, perhaps many years later, placed in a different mummy case. We can only speculate.”

  She went on, describing what she was uncovering. “So, we do not know this woman’s name. But we can find out quite a lot about her. For example, this woman’s hair has been cut very short, so presumably she wore a wig . . . Her teeth are quite worn, so certainly she was over thirty years old when she died . . . I can estimate she was about five feet in height . . . her eyes have been replaced with blue-coloured stones . . . there are signs that her brain was extracted through the right nostril, and that the same route was then used to pack the empty brain cavity with some kind of textile . . . there are magical amulets placed on her body and metal plates over the incision where her organs were removed . . .”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia wielded a scalpel, and suddenly bent and looked closer. “Ah, now, this is interesting – and unusual. Her organs have been placed back into her chest cavity, rather than being stored in canopic jars. Yes, indeed, most intriguing . . .”

  The audience was hanging on her every word, enthralled, but Hattie suddenly felt uneasy. She glanced up. The room had darkened a little. The gas lights along the wall flickered and popped momentarily, casting strange shadows. Something, somehow, felt wrong.

  Hattie looked sharply around the room, then at the Ravens and Great-aunt Iphigenia. Nothing appeared unusual. Well, nothing more unusual than a party of wealthy and influential people watching someone unwrap a mummy at an afternoon tea party. It was not a thing that occurred every
day, after all. Yes, that must be all it was, Hattie decided. She settled down again to watch the unwrapping. Great-aunt Iphigenia was now removing and describing the amulets she had found on the mummy, and handing them to the Ravens. They took them reverently and placed them to one side of the table.

  And Hattie suddenly had an astonishing, magnificent, astounding idea. So astounding that she forgot all about her unease. Would she follow in her great-aunt’s footsteps, Lord Arelsford had asked her. Why not sooner rather than later? What if it wasn’t the boring, black-clad Ravens assisting Great-aunt Iphigenia? What if it was someone dressed in a full ancient Egyptian costume? Someone in a white robe and a plaited wig, looking like an ancient Egyptian princess? Someone like Hattie.

  Hattie gasped with the brilliance of it all.

  “Out of the question,” said Edgar Raven, reaching up to place his attache case on the overhead luggage rack of the train.

  “Impossible,” said Edwina Raven.

  Hattie glared at them. She’d been dismayed when the Ravens joined them in their compartment on the way back to Ely. She’d thought she’d have some time with her great-aunt by herself to put her astonishing, magnificent, astounding idea to her. She’d been so excited about it she just couldn’t wait, and before the train had even left the station she’d been in the middle of explaining it to Great-aunt Iphigenia when the compartment door slid open and the Ravens walked in.

  Hattie had stopped, open-mouthed. “But - aren’t you travelling with the mummy case?” she said. “In the luggage van?”

  “The mummy case has remained with Lord Arelsford,” Edgar Raven said. “It belongs to him, now. And the mummy as well. Surely you noticed we didn’t leave the house with it?”

  Hattie, in fact, hadn’t. She’d been so taken with her brilliant idea, so busy planning how best to propose it to Great-aunt Iphigenia, that the absence of the mummy and mummy case had completely escaped her. How did I miss that, she wondered?

  “What happens to the mummy?” she asked, momentarily diverted from her brilliant idea. “What will Lord Alresford do with it?”

  “He might perhaps keep it on display,” said Edgar Raven. “But most likely he will simply dispose of it.”

  “Dispose?”

  “Throw it out. Burn it. Destroy it. That is his business.”

  Hattie thought that would be a great pity. She wished she’d asked Great-aunt Iphigenia about it. But she’d been so occupied with saying goodbye to Lord Arelsford, who had been shaking hands heartily with Great-aunt Iphigenia, and complimenting her on a most interesting demonstration, and how he’d had no idea that you could discover so much about the ancient Egyptians from a mummy, and yes, he’d certainly recommend her to all his friends, and – with a twinkle of his eye in Hattie’s direction – how he’d actually been quite disappointed not to have seen more of her young assistant, who, if she liked Egyptology as much as she liked cake, was sure to be a success in her chosen career – that, in short, Hattie had not noticed that the mummy case was no longer in evidence.

  She stopped short in her speech to Great-aunt Iphigenia.

  “Don’t let us disturb your conversation, Hatshepsut,” said Edgar Raven. “Do go on.”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia smiled at Hattie encouragingly, so Hattie was forced to continue.

  The Ravens’ reaction was just as she’d expected. Out of the question. Impossible.

  Hattie turned to Great-aunt Iphigenia. “Is it out of the question? Is it impossible?” she asked. Her voice trembled. She so badly wanted to do this!

  Great-aunt Iphigenia pondered, gazing out of the train window. She turned back to the Ravens. “What are your objections, exactly?” she asked.

  “Well, well –” Edgar Raven looked confounded.

  Edwina Raven thought faster. “The mummy cases,” she said. “Edgar and I lift the mummy cases. And take the mummy out.” She gave Hattie a hard look. “The mummy cases are too heavy for a child to lift unassisted. And the mummy itself, though lighter, is too awkward for one person.”

  Hattie was crushed. She hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought past the vision of herself in Egyptian costume, handing instruments to Great-aunt Iphigenia. Much as she hated to admit it, Edwina Raven was right.

  “Yes. I see.” Great-aunt Iphigenia was still thinking, staring out at the rows of sooty, terraced houses flashing by the window. She turned to face the Ravens. “But I also see the undoubted advantages of what Hattie is suggesting. An Egyptian princess assisting at the unwrapping. Letting the audience see how people dressed in ancient times – why, it’s a splendid idea, don’t you think?”

  “But –” spluttered Edgar Raven.

  Great-aunt Iphigenia waved a hand. “Yes, yes, I do see the problem. But how can it be made to work? There must be a role Hattie can play.”

  Hattie seized her opportunity. “Perhaps Mr Edgar and Miss Edwina could still remove the mummy case and lift out the mummy?” she suggested. “And I could pass your instruments to you?”

  “Well, now,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. “What a good idea.” She beamed around the compartment. “That solves everything, doesn’t it? Edgar and Edwina do the lifting, and the Egyptian princess passes the instruments! Edgar, Edwina, don’t you think that’s a splendid solution? Now everyone’s happy!”

  The train rushed on through the gathering dusk, cinders and sparks flying by outside like insects of fire. Great-aunt Iphigenia was beaming, sure that the perfect solution had been reached. The atmosphere between Hattie and the Ravens crackled with dislike.

  At breakfast a few days later, Edgar Raven announced that several more requests for mummy unwrappings had been received. “All as a result of Lord Arelsford’s party,” he said. “I knew it would lead to greater things!”

  “Well done, Edgar,” smiled Great-aunt Iphigenia. “You and Edwina will make the arrangements, as usual?”

  “Indeed we will,” confirmed Edgar Raven. “I will need to travel to London to see our usual dealer. There are three new unwrapping requests here, and we have only two mummies left in the mummy room.”

  “I’m sure you will find suitable specimens, Edgar,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. She turned to Hattie. “Hattie, my dear, perhaps you should start preparing a suitable costume. Have you done anything about it yet?”

  Hattie hadn’t. She had been kept hard at work by Great-uncle Sisyphus. Now, she thought of all those many, many Cabinets of Curiosities. “Where should I look?” she asked. “Would there be something in the cabinets, do you think?”

  “Not in the cabinets, I’m afraid,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus. “You won’t find what you’re looking for in there. Textiles from so long ago, if there are any at all, would be extremely fragile. Impossible to wear.”

  “Perhaps the chests in the attic,” suggested Great-aunt Iphigenia. “Remember, Sisyphus? There were chests of old clothes and costumes we used to dress up in, on rainy days. I have an idea there was some sort of an Egyptian outfit. Do you recall?”

  Great-uncle Sisyphus wrinkled his forehead. “Something one of our aunts wore to a fancy-dress ball as a girl? I do seem to remember you parading around, saying you were Cleopatra.”

  They both laughed at the memory.

  “My goodness, yes. That would have been the costume our Aunt Hypatia wore, at the Dorrington Hunt Ball. The night before she ran away to become an equestrienne with the circus, you remember, Sisyphus?” Great-aunt Iphigenia realised Hattie was staring at her. “Old stories, my dear. I’ll tell you about Aunt Hypatia sometime. Such a spirited gel. Always such a bruising rider . . .”

  “So I think you should start in the attics,” Great-uncle Sisyphus said to Hattie. “North wing, as I recall. Of course,” his face clouded, “the roof may have collapsed there by now. Or the moths could have got in and eaten holes in everything . . .”

  “I’ll look today!” Hattie said. She caught Great-uncle Sisyphus’ eye on her. “As soon as we’ve finished my lessons, of course.”

  Late that afternoon,
Sekhmet and the kittens escorted Hattie to the north wing, and up flight after flight of stairs. The last flight leading to the attics was as steep as a ladder and Hattie arrived at the top panting, almost too breathless to push open the heavy trapdoor above her head. On her third try she managed to heave it back. It fell with a crash, and dust poured down on them like a grey waterfall. The kittens sneezed and rubbed their noses before bounding past Hattie and through the opening. When Hattie clambered up herself, they were all occupied with chasing spiders. Enormous spiders, scuttling across the floor in a panic, raising more puffs of dust that rolled to the corners of the room, looking like fluffy grey rabbits. The spiders scuttled into webs that hung along the walls, thick as curtains, and gazed down at them.

  Hattie tried to ignore the many spider eyes peering at her. The attics still had a roof, she was pleased to see, but they stretched forever and there were more chests than she could easily count. And not only chests. Toys lay scattered about, too. A wonderful rocking horse with a flowing mane and tail. A Noah’s Ark, full of little wooden animals. Hattie put her hand out to touch the rocking horse and it swayed gently. Where to start, she wondered. This could take days! Sekhmet, however, had walked up to one chest and seated herself beside it.

  “This one?” asked Hattie.

  Sekhmet inclined her head. The kittens forgot the spiders and crowded around to watch as Hattie raised the lid.

  The chest looked as if it was full of rainbows. Hats and dresses and cloaks and trousers and coats in red, blue, yellow, green, purple, orange. High boots in brown and black leather. Scarves with tiny mirrors embroidered onto them. Hats fluttering with feathers.

  The kittens leaped into the chest with squeaks of joy and plunged up and down among the contents.

  Hattie took out armful after armful of bright colour. But it’s white I’m looking for, she kept telling herself. White! However, she couldn’t resist trying on hats and bonnets, and looping scarves around her neck.