The Mummy Smugglers of Crumblin Castle

by Pamela Rushby

  “Yes,” breathed Hattie. “Oh, yes!” She walked slowly along the walls of the tomb, absorbing scene after scene. Here, Ti stood on a flat-bottomed boat propelled by men with long poles. Under their feet, under the water, lurked hippopotamuses and a crocodile, and many different kinds of fish. Above them, papyrus plants stretched high, and in the tops of the plants birds fluttered, stalked by foxes.

  Amal shuffled behind her, glancing briefly at the walls now and then, but mostly staring at her feet, radiating boredom.

  “You don’t find this interesting?” Hattie could not believe Amal could ignore these vivid pictures of life in the past.

  Amal shrugged. “It is all so old. So long ago. It is the future we should be looking to.”

  “But –” Hattie shook her head; gave it up. She moved ahead. There, men drove cattle home from the fields. One boy carried a small calf slung across his shoulders, and the calf’s mother followed closely and protectively behind. Here, men herded a flock of goats, and women carried large baskets on their heads. Scribes recorded diligently on slabs of stone. Cattle forded a shallow part of the river. It was a beautiful, peaceful, prosperous world. Ti’s world.

  And these carvings and paintings, thought Hattie, ensured that Ti would enjoy his peaceful, prosperous world forever.

  Unless.

  The thought came with a jolt.

  Unless, somehow, his physical body was destroyed.

  It was a disturbing thought.

  “Um, where is Ti’s mummy now?” Hattie asked. “Is it – is it here?”

  “It’s not here,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. “The tomb, as you see, has been opened, the burial chamber is empty. No one knows, I believe, what has happened to Ti’s mummy.”

  Hattie stopped dead, in front of a carving of Ti inspecting a herd of fat cattle. If no one knew where Ti’s mummy was, she thought, if it had been destroyed, would Ti’s spirit be happily contemplating his fat cattle in the afterlife now? Or – she swallowed – would it, instead, be wandering in darkness, alone, lost and despairing? She remembered, although she desperately didn’t want to, the party at the Countess of Carlisle’s house, and the child Tamut, weeping and dissolving into blackness. She had done what she could by asking for the mummies to be returned safely to Crumblin Castle. But what had happened to Ti? Could it be –

  Amal looked at her sharply. “What is wrong?”

  Hattie suddenly felt faint. She put out her hand and clutched the wall. No! She didn’t want to think of that! She pushed the thought away, tried to bury it, tried to lock it in the back of her mind and throw away the key.

  “Are you all right, Hattie?” asked Great-aunt Iphigenia. “You seem to have gone a little pale.”

  “It’s – it’s a little warm in here,” faltered Hattie.

  “So it is,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus. “And we’ve spent rather too long in here as it is. We should be on our way to the Serapeum. The tomb of the sacred bulls, you know.”

  “Perhaps a pause for refreshment?” suggested Omar Shaydi.

  Great-uncle Sisyphus blinked, as if he’d never heard of such a thing. “Very well. If everyone is in need of refreshment,” he conceded.

  Everyone else was. They sat in the shade of Ti’s tomb, and the donkey leaders unpacked a basket of cool drinks, sandwiches and fruit.

  “But we must get on,” urged Great-uncle Sisyphus. “The Serapeum –”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia glanced at Hattie and at the Ravens. Hattie had recovered her colour, but the Ravens were visibly wilting in the midday heat.

  Amal, sitting a little apart, had a close eye on Hattie. Hattie could tell she was curious. It made her uncomfortable. “Tell us about the Serapeum for a little, Great-uncle Sisyphus,” she suggested.

  Great-uncle Sisyphus was only too happy to talk about the Serapeum. He cleared his throat. “The Serapeum was the burial place of the Apis bulls,” he said. “They were sacred animals, calves of a cow struck by divine lightning from the heavens, incarnations of the god Ptah, god of the city of Memphis. They were worshipped in the temple of Ptah and lived out their lives there. When they died, they were mummified and placed in great granite sarcophaguses in subterranean galleries under their temple at Saqqara. And there they stayed.”

  “Until?” Great-aunt Iphigenia encouraged him.

  “Until they were discovered by the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette in 1856,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus. “I saw the galleries of bulls not long after Mariette had excavated them. Extraordinary! Simply extraordinary! Do you know –” He was silent for a moment. “Do you know, Mariette told me that when he discovered the galleries, all but one chamber had been robbed, long, long ago. But on that unopened chamber door, he found the fingermarks of the ancient Egyptian who had sealed the doorway. And there were prints of bare feet in the sand in front of the door. Prints made thirty-seven centuries ago . . .”

  “Oh,” said Hattie. She leaned forward eagerly. “Oh! I wish I’d seen that.”

  “So do I, my dear,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus. “So do I. But – let’s get on and see what we can!”

  At the entrance to the Serapeum, a fierce old man in a long robe barred the way down a steep descent into the earth. At the bottom was a door, closed off with an iron grille. Omar Shaydi had a short conversation with the old man. Coins changed hands, then the old man, now far more cheerful, produced a lantern and candles. He beckoned to the group to follow him. He reached for a bunch of keys and unlocked the grille. The iron door opened with a shriek of rusty metal.

  “It’s – it’s very dark in there,” observed Edwina Raven.

  “But we have candles,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus.

  The candles did not do a great deal to dispel the darkness. The old man motioned for them all to enter, then closed the door behind them with an echoing clang and locked it again. He led the way down a long subterranean passage, his lantern bobbing ahead and casting wavering shadows on the walls. Hattie found the atmosphere hot and thick, and it was hard to breathe. Dust hung in the air, shining in the light of their candles, hardly stirring as they passed.

  The old man paused and waited for them all to reach him, then held his lantern high. Hattie could see they had entered a vast, vaulted chamber. The light of their candles barely illuminated the great space above them. In the centre of the chamber stood a giant block of dark granite. It had once been sealed with a solid lid, but this was now pushed partly aside.

  “Is that –?” breathed Hattie.

  “The tomb of a sacred bull,” nodded Great-uncle Sisyphus.

  The old man pointed and urged them on, towards the sarcophagus. A ladder stood beside the giant tomb.

  “He says you may see inside,” said Omar Shaydi. “If you wish.”

  “A little beyond me these days,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus. “You younger ones may care to.”

  Hattie did, of course. She scrambled up the ladder and peered in. She could see nothing. Omar Shaydi passed a candle to her and she held it to the gap where the lid had been pushed aside. “Empty,” she said. Her voice echoed eerily in the huge sarcophagus. “Quite empty.” It was disappointing. She’d hoped she might see the mummified remains of an ancient bull inside.

  She looked down and saw Amal wandering towards the back of the sarcophagus. “Don’t you want to come up and see, Amal?” she suggested.

  Amal gave Hattie a sharp look, then, clearly humouring her, climbed up to peer briefly into the sarcophagus. “Yes,” she confirmed. “Empty.”

  “There are twenty-five more like this,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus. “Think of it. Twenty-five more. Gallery after gallery. Sarcophagus after sarcophagus. All empty – but for the one found by Mariette. And who knows if there are more galleries yet to be uncovered. They could be under our very feet.”

  Hattie glanced down. She didn’t like the sound of that: vast undiscovered galleries of sacred bulls under her feet. Who knew what creatures, creatures that shuffled and whispered in the dark, might be down there . . . Suddenl
y, she felt she’d seen enough. She wanted light and air again.

  The shadows flickered and flowed on the walls, and the old man appeared to feel he’d done his duty. He turned and began to lead them out. Hattie wasn’t sorry. It was very dark, and very hot. The way seemed longer – much longer than it had coming in. Had the old man missed his way? There were so many passages.

  Edwina Raven gave a gasp of relief when a gleam of daylight reached them and they could see the barred door ahead. Hattie, for once, was in total sympathy. They stumbled up the steep slope and found their donkeys waiting for them. The donkey leaders had the picnic basket unfastened, and cool drinks waiting. They also wanted to speak, urgently, with Omar Shaydi.

  Hattie listened as she gulped down lemonade. The donkey leaders were indicating the sky. Hattie looked up. The sky was still blue, but there was something different about the light. Before they had entered the Serapeum, the cliffs in the distance had been clear and distinct. Now, they appeared hazy, out of focus. And the sky – surely it had been a clearer blue before? Now there was a faint tinge of yellow to it.

  “Sandstorm,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia quietly.

  Sandstorm. Hattie had heard about those. “Is everything all right?” she asked anxiously.

  “No,” said Amal. “It is a sandstorm. It is not all right.”

  “I think Omar Shaydi is deciding whether we will have time to get back to the dahabiya, or whether we should shelter here,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. “But we will be quite safe.”

  The donkey leader shouted at his men. The picnic basket was seized and packed up.

  “We will go,” said Omar Shaydi. The decision had been made.

  There was no leisurely riding now. The donkeys were urged along. Back past the tomb of Ti, past the Step Pyramid, along the high road above the fields. There were no people working in the fields, no animals on the road. Through the village, where pigeons were fluttering into their pigeon towers to take shelter, and women were pulling wooden shutters over the windows of their homes. The air was still and breathless, as if it was waiting.

  Hattie glanced over her shoulder. She could no longer see the Step Pyramid, or the cliffs of plundered tombs. She saw, instead, a yellow fog on the horizon, rolling steadily and slowly towards them. A breeze stirred the still air. Date palms suddenly rattled and thrashed. The donkey leaders waved sticks and urged their mounts into a bone-jarring trot.

  They reached the river, where the Hetepheres was pulling and tugging at her moorings and the river had formed into rolling, angry waves with dirty white foam on their crests.

  As Hattie looked back, the village disappeared in the yellow fog. The earth seemed to be in motion, seemed to ripple, as waves of sand chased each other over the surface of the ground.

  “On board, on board!” Omar Shaydi shouted.

  The waiting crew caught their hands and dragged them up the gangway and onto the boat. The saloon door opened to receive them, closed with a bang! and they were inside.

  And then the storm hit. The air was so full of sand it felt solid. Hattie flew to the window to watch, but in seconds she could see nothing. The sand battered against the glass, fought to get in, found tiny cracks and slid cunningly inside, pooling on windowsills and at the bottom of doors, and hanging in the air. Eyes began to itch and scratch, teeth crunched on grains of sand, mouths turned dry. The skin on hands and faces felt coarse and papery.

  It lasted for an hour. No one moved from the saloon. They waited, as the dahabiya rolled with the wind.

  “Have – have boats ever sunk in storms like this?” asked Edwina Raven.

  “Oh indeed yes,” said Great-uncle Sisyphus cheerfully. “Why, I was in a storm on the Nile once –” He glanced at Edwina Raven’s face and seemed to change his mind about the story he was about to tell. “These storms last only a short time,” he said reassuringly. “And they are infrequent. I doubt we’ll see another in all the time we are in Egypt.”

  He was right. The sandstorm passed, ending with a short, sharp burst of heavy rain. The wind dropped. The sky cleared.

  The stewards opened doors and windows, produced brooms and began to sweep away the sand that had infiltrated the saloon.

  Before long, all was back to normal. The donkey leaders appeared on the bank to collect their payment, and Omar Shaydi went to deal with them.

  “Well, Hattie,” said Great-aunt Iphigenia. “What did you think of Saqqara? Did you enjoy your first day on the Nile?”

  Hattie turned a glowing face to her. “It was amazing! It was absolutely amazing! The way the Step Pyramid went up and up to the stars, and how the Serapeum was so dark and hot and deep, and the sandstorm – the sandstorm! And –” She stopped. She did not want to remember Ti’s tomb and the strange, dark thoughts she had had there, her fears for Ti’s spirit and whether it was happy in the afterlife, or lost and wandering in blackness. She did not want to think of Ti, or the child Tamut, or any other ancient Egyptian, torn from their afterlife paradise and cast into darkness. She wouldn’t think of that. She pushed the disturbing thoughts away.

  And turned to find Amal looking at her questioningly.

  “It was,” said Hattie determinedly, “amazing! Just an amazing day!”

  Great-aunt Iphigenia smiled brilliantly. “And we will have more, many more just such amazing days!” she promised.

  Hattie struggled, and managed to smile. If it wasn’t for the disturbing thoughts she kept having, she could, she thought, have asked for nothing better.

  In the background, the Ravens glowered and scowled.

  Days slid by, days in which so many exciting things happened that Hattie was almost, almost able not to think of souls lost, wandering in darkness.

  The Hetepheres moved along the river, encountering other dahabiyas, large and small, some proceeding upriver, as they were, towards Luxor, then the cataracts and Aswan; others on the return journey. As the boats passed they saluted each other with flags and gunfire.

  One boat issued a challenge. It was a large, wooden dahabiya with a party of energetic, enthusiastic and very loud young Americans aboard. They waved and gesticulated.

  Rais Abdallah regarded them. “They wish to race,” he said.

  “Do they? Will we?” Hattie asked.

  “If the master wishes it,” replied Rais Abdallah.

  “Do you wish it?” Hattie asked.

  Rais Abdallah’s eyes gleamed, and Hattie understood that a race would not be rejected. She looked at Great-uncle Sisyphus pleadingly. “It would be such fun to race,” she said.

  Great-uncle Sisyphus raised an eyebrow at Rais Abdallah. “What do you think?”

  Rais Abdallah’s eyes were afire. He glanced across at the rais of the challenging dahabiya. “That one,” he said scathingly, “that one could not sail in an irrigation ditch.”

  Great-uncle Sisyphus smiled behind his hand. Clearly there was an old rivalry there. “We’ll take them on if you wish it, then,” he said. “Whenever it suits you, Rais Abdallah.”

  Rais Abdallah leaped to his post. Signals were exchanged, sails trimmed. The wind tested. The young Americans flourished flags and parasols. Even Amal dropped her mathematics book and leaned forward to watch.

  “We wait for your signal,” Rais Abdallah bellowed across to the other boat. But before the signal came, the other boat raised its sails high and spurted forward. The young Americans cheered and shouted. Rais Abdallah roared in indignation. “They cheat! There was no signal!” He swung to his crew and barked instructions. The sails flew up the masts. The Hetepheres, too, sped away.

  “They’ll beat us!” Hattie cried. “They’ve got too much of a start!”

  “Wait. Just wait,” Rais Abdallah took a moment to tell her. “Wait for the bend in the river, and the shallows near the bank. We are smaller, lighter –” His mouth tightened in determination.

  Hattie and Amal clung to the mast as the two boats swept towards the far bend in the river. The Hetepheres was gaining, just a little, but they woul
d never catch up, surely. Then, as Hattie despaired, and the young Americans cheered and jeered at them, Rais Abdallah swung the wheel and the Hetepheres slid towards the impossibly tiny space between its rival and the river bank.

  “But we’ll be stuck in the shallows,” Hattie whispered.

  They did not stick in the shallows. The hull of the Hetepheres, Hattie calculated, must have missed running aground by inches, but they did not stick. The Hetepheres slid between the bank and her rival like oil, and then drew ahead. The cheering and jeering from the young Americans halted abruptly.

  “We won! We won!” Hattie shouted. The Hetepheres’ crew waved and danced and gestured at their crestfallen rival.

  “Yes. We have won.” Rais Abdallah contented himself with a triumphant glance back at the rais of the American boat.

  On that day, there had been a splendid wind. But on another day, there was no wind at all. The Hetepheres lay motionless on the water, sitting mirrored on its own reflection.

  Rais Abdallah looked at the sky, frowned, shrugged, and gave orders. The crew, resigned, attached long ropes to the front of the dahabiya. Then they slid over the side and made their way to the bank, pulling the long ropes with them. They stretched the ropes out along the bank and placed themselves along the ropes at intervals. On Rais Abdallah’s call, they picked up the ropes and began to pull. Pull. Pull. Pull again. Slowly, the Hetepheres began to move. The men dug their feet into the soft bank and pulled mightily, arms straining, and the Hetepheres slid forward. The men were dragging it up the river.

  “But it’s such hard work for them!” Hattie cried.

  “It is what we must do when there is no wind,” said Rais Abdallah with finality. “It is their job.”

  The men pulled for hours. Hattie was relieved when a breeze finally sprang up and the Hetepheres could move under its power. The crew climbed back on board. But there was no rest for them even then; they were immediately put to raising the sails. Rais Abdallah saw Hattie watching them unhappily. “It is their job,” he said again. “They are all happy to have such good jobs, with good pay and good food.”