‘Maybe I can do something to help at the pyramid of Menkaure. After this I might take a rest from diving for a while. I could do some work on land.’
‘Dad, you didn’t say that. Get over it.’
‘That sounds like Costas talking. He doesn’t have to face the board of directors tomorrow.’
‘Actually, he does. He volunteered to go along to make sure the record was straight. Anyway, let’s face it, you run this place. You created the board of directors.’
‘When I created the board, I relinquished my control over IMU to them so that I would just be another employee. I’d seen too many institutions run like tinpot dictatorships.’
‘They’re hardly going to fire you, Dad. Come on. Anyway, I’m going back up to your great-great-grandad’s archive in the attic. One of those boxes is going to have that letter from Lieutenant Tanner, I’m sure of it. It might just give us the clue we need to whatever was in that other envelope. We don’t have to go back to Sudan to tie up that story. And get on the phone to Maurice, Dad. You’re his best friend. You owe it to him.’
Rebecca marched out, and Jack put his feet up on the corner of his desk, staring again at the portraits on the wall: the first Jack Howard, an Elizabethan sea dog who had made his fortune as a privateer plundering Spanish treasure ships, and then fought the Armada under Drake and Raleigh; beside him Captain Matthias Howard, who had traded in tobacco from his estates in Maryland and Virginia before turning his attentions to the east, where he had put his money into an East Indiaman and doubled the family fortune, allowing him to build the present house; and on the opposite side of the door Colonel John Howard, Royal Engineers, Jack’s great-great-grandfather, who had served with distinction in India before disappearing on a quest into Afghanistan, one that Jack and Costas had finally brought to resolution almost a hundred years later. They were all there in Jack’s mind, not just those three, but the many men and women in between who had given him his sense of identity, had made him feel that he was part of the tradition of exploration and adventure and risk-taking that was in his blood.
He knew he did not have to live up to any of them, only to the ideal he had set himself. And since Rebecca had arrived in his life it had not just been about him, but about her too, about how he could help her to feel that same urge that had always driven him forward, a relishing of the voyage of discovery as much as a yearning for the destination, for the prize that sometimes remained elusive. If there was anything he had learned from being an archaeologist, it was this: that too often the treasure at the end of the quest was an illusion, an ever-receding mirage, and the real discoveries were the ones made along the way, revelations of ancient and present lives, voyages of self-discovery and friendship.
Perhaps chasing Akhenaten’s quest had been like that. They had made fabulous discoveries. A whole chapter of Victorian history in the desert had opened up in a way that Jack had never anticipated. And he now understood better what made men tick who had gone off by themselves in search of revelation, men like Gordon, men like himself. He had a hunch that somewhere within those months in 1884 and 1885 was a man who still could not be found, a void at the centre of the story, yet who was somehow inextricably tied up with the fate of Gordon; it was a void that Jack had found himself trying to occupy, as he struggled to imagine what had really gone on. He stared at the portrait of Colonel Howard in his uniform, wishing yet again that he had been able to talk to him, but feeling closer now to understanding what it was that had motivated the explorers and archaeologists of that generation. For Jack these were discoveries of significance. Perhaps the story of Akhenaten’s quest, of his fabled lost city of light, could now be finished, a book to be shut.
He thought about what Rebecca had said, and about those things that had so excited him about his ancestors: exploration and adventure and risk-taking. He had taken a risk in going to the site of the Abbas, and it had not worked out. Risk-taking was all about accepting the possibility of failure. Perhaps he had been too lucky during his career, and needed to learn humility. Rebecca was about the future, and that was where he needed to put his mind now. He took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. Sitting in the middle of his desk was the press release from Sofia about the Beatrice, waiting to be read. He might not be able to tie up all the loose ends in the Sudan, but the discovery of the Beatrice was a fantastic result and he would do everything in his power to make sure that the project put IMU in the best possible light. He pushed back his chair, put his feet down and picked up the report, feeling better already. He remembered what Sofia had called their submersible, Nina, after Columbus’ ship, and how she had wanted IMU to go to the Americas: maybe she was right. It had been almost eight years since he had taken an IMU team to Canada and then to Mexico, on the trail of crusader gold. For several years now, while there was so much going on elsewhere, he had resisted pleas from their US representative to start a new project in America. That was where he would go next. He needed a fresh start, new horizons, like Columbus. He would talk about it tomorrow morning when he had the meeting with the IMU board of directors to explain the Abbas incident, so that he could end the grilling on a positive note. And he would get Hiebermeyer to call in to outline his plans for returning the sarcophagus of Menkaure to its rightful place inside the pyramid at Giza.
He thought of that word: pyramid. It triggered something, a very distant memory. He put down the report and picked up the brown envelope that Corporal Jones had sent to his great-great-grandfather, the envelope that he thought had contained some kind of artefact. He looked at it again, tracing his fingers over the careful handwriting of the address, and then glanced at the portrait of Colonel Howard. That was it. He remembered now. His pulse quickened, and he sat upright, thinking back forty years. It had been in this very room; he and his grandfather had been standing in front of that very portrait. His grandfather had been telling him how as a young boy he had been allowed once a week to go upstairs into the attic where his own grandfather had lived, to see his stamp collection. It had been during the few years of Colonel Howard’s retirement before his final quest into Afghanistan, and he had lived not here but in a cruck-framed half-timbered cottage in a remote village in Herefordshire, a secluded place where he could get on with his writing projects without distraction. His daughter and grandchildren had lived downstairs. But it was not the stamp collection that had so intrigued the little boy. It was an ancient artefact, a square stone with carvings all over it, sitting in a niche in the old timbers of the wall. His grandfather had remembered it so clearly all those years later because the big timbers of the cruck frame came together to form an inverted V shape in the attic, just like a pyramid. And that was what he had seen on the ancient stone: a pyramid. Colonel Howard had told the boy that he had been sent it from Egypt, and that it had once been in an ancient temple.
Jack was suddenly coursing with excitement. Could it still be there? The cruck-framed house was still in the possession of the Howard estate, lived in by one of Jack’s elderly aunts. He pulled out his phone, scrolled through the address list and made a call. There was no reply, and he left a message. He drummed his fingers against the desk. He could make it up there today, and return in time for the meeting tomorrow morning. It would be a long drive, but he could do with it. And if there was a result, it would be something else he could throw in front of the board of directors.
Rebecca came bounding through the door, holding a small brown parcel that looked about the same vintage as the envelope Jack had been looking at, though hers evidently still held its contents. Jack knew there would be numerous interesting items among Colonel Howard’s papers, and this package was too big to be Lieutenant Tanner’s letter. She was flushed with excitement, but Jack held up his hand. ‘Before we get distracted by anything, I may have made a breakthrough. I remembered something your great-grandfather told me years ago about an ancient Egyptian artefact shown to him by his grandfather, Colonel Howard. It’s just possible that it’s the artefact that was once in the env
elope that Corporal Jones sent him. And I think I know where it might be. We might have to drop everything and go on a long drive.’
‘Hold it right there, Dad. First, this.’ She took a single sheet of old letter paper out of the package she was carrying, cleared her throat and stood upright. She sniffed, and Jack realised that she had been crying. ‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘It’s just this,’ she said, holding up the letter. ‘I’ll be fine.’ She cleared her throat again. ‘This is the final page of the letter from Lieutenant Tanner at Semna to Howard. It’s very affectionate; they seem to have been great friends. Tanner was in love with Howard’s sister-in-law, and was planning to marry her when he returned from Egypt. I think the letter was written somewhere dusty, not at a desk. He’d been doing something grim, burying some comrades, and the tone of the letter is as if he’s making the best of a bad situation, taking his mind away from it.’
Jack leaned forward, suddenly riveted. ‘That would be the sangar, and the grim business would be the burial of the two soldiers killed there by the Mahdist sniper. Incredible. This really gives the story behind Maurice and Aysha’s discoveries.’
‘He mentions the crocodile mummies,’ Rebecca said. ‘As an archaeology enthusiast he must have recognised them for what they were, as the soldiers were digging through them to make the graves.’
‘Read out the entire page, Rebecca.’
She took a deep breath, and began:
‘As well as the extraordinary crocodile mummies, there is another remarkable archaeological discovery here that I’d love to tell you about but it will have to be another time, when I can sit down undistracted and do it justice – suffice to say that Edward Mayne was here with us, and went with the major of the Canadian contingent and myself into the underground temple, through the barest of cracks at the top of the door – that really gives the game away to you, doesn’t it, but it’s not fair to keep you on tenterhooks, until I write next time; at any rate Mayne took a small stone slab with carving which he instructed me to give to his servant, Corporal Jones, who you will remember from the Rampa expedition when he was a sergeant, and I instructed Jones to send it on to you if Mayne should be killed. It may be merely of passing interest to you, I fancy, but as I believe you have been appointed curator of Gordon’s antiquities – for which my congratulations – it would make sense for you to be its recipient. Corporal Jones, incidentally, is for the Railway Company, to keep him out of mischief and away from any fights, though I fear we may all be in line for that in due course, with the Mahdi’s army growing daily. Mayne is for headquarters at Korti and some secret mission, I know not what. He has being doing reconnaissance out here. (You will remember that he instructed us in sharpshooting when we were juniors at Chatham; he has his rifle out here, I believe it is a Sharps, tho’ he keeps it concealed. It was he who used one of our rifles to pot the Mahdist sharpshooter who killed our two poor soldiers.)
My dear John, I am fed up with war already and would wish nothing better than to take up an appointment like that held by Kitchener in Palestine and carry out archaeological survey, or perhaps back in India. Egypt is now crying out for archaeologists as will the Sudan if we can finish this infernal war and get Gordon out alive. But if I were to be an archaeologist in Egypt, then your sister-in-law, darling Maria, would have to live in Cairo, and I would wish that on no English woman on account of the cholera, certainly no English woman wishing to bear children. I would not wish my wife to endure the sufferings of your own dear wife Georgina when your poor boy Edward died in Bangalore. Perhaps if there is no survey post I will find a position at the School of Military Engineering and we can communicate not by letter but daily and in person. I should like that above all things.
I am called by General Earle to the river. More anon.
Your most affectionate friend and fellow archaeologist,
P. Tanner, Lieutenant, Royal Engineers, at Semna, November 24th, 1885’
Rebecca looked up, and put the letter on Jack’s desk. ‘I was sad because you said he was killed only a few weeks later. It seems such a waste. I almost think of him as still being there, at that date, waiting for a life ahead which would never be fulfilled. You can say what you like about Gordon, but this was the cost.’
Jack took the letter and looked at it. Now he knew the name of the sniper: Mayne. He quickly walked over to the cased book collection that he had inherited from his grandfather, and pulled out several volumes of the Army List for the 1870s and 1880s. ‘Here it is,’ he murmured. ‘Edward Mayne, commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1868, captain 1878, major 1884. Served in the Red River expedition in Canada in 1871. Always a survey officer, or on secondment. This is interesting. He disappears completely from the list after 1885. Missing, whereabouts unknown.’
‘Killed in the desert campaign?’
‘If so, not on official operations, otherwise it would have been recorded. But it wasn’t unknown for men to ride out and disappear without trace in the desert.’
‘And did you notice? Tanner mentions the plaque.’
‘Yes,’ Jack said excitedly. ‘I’m sure it’s the square slab that was missing from the carving on the wall in the temple. It might, just might, contain some clues as to the meaning of the image in the carving. Even if I can’t go back to Sudan, we might at least be able to wrap that one up.’ His phone flashed, and he picked it up, reading the message. ‘Yes,’ he exclaimed. ‘Your great-aunt Margaret is back at home. Told me off for leaving an answerphone message instead of sending a text. That’s a modern eighty year old for you. That’s where we’re going. She’ll be delighted to see us this afternoon. We’d better be on our way.’
‘Not before you see what else I’ve found. We can read it in the car.’
‘Okay. Let’s be quick about it. Fire away.’
She held the brown parcel in front of her. ‘This was at the bottom of the first box of Howard’s papers. It was sent to him at the School of Military Engineering in Chatham from a remote location in Ontario through the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs. It seems to have taken a long time getting out of Canada, as no postage was put on it. You can see that on one part of the envelope it’s marked “Veteran”, and the Canadian Department of Veteran Affairs seems to have decided to cover the costs. Beside “Veteran” it says “Nile, 1884–5”. But the postmark from Ottawa is the twenty-fifth of January 1925.’
‘That’s almost fifteen years after Colonel Howard died.’
‘It was unopened. It must have been forwarded by the School to his last known address, and someone stashed it with his stuff.’
‘Do we know who the sender was?’
‘His name was Henri Charrière. I remember you talking about Canadian Mohawk Indians on the Nile, and I looked him up in a book you recently ordered for the library on the subject. He’s in it, though there are few details. He served in the Red River expedition, like Mayne. The two men must have known each other, because Charrière was with the voyageur contingent on the Nile on that day in 1884 when Tanner wrote his letter. Unlike the other Indians, there’s no record of when he went back to Canada, and he didn’t return to live in their communities. There’s a note saying that a man with his name with a veteran’s pension was living in 1922 in a cabin beside Lake Traverse in Algonquin Park, a wilderness area in Ontario. He must have been at least eighty years old by then. How he ended up with what’s in this package, and why he sat on it for so long before deciding to send it to someone in authority, is a mystery.’
‘Show it to me while we walk out.’
‘You might want to stay sitting just for this bit. I opened it to see the cover, but I thought you might want to be the first one to open the actual book.’
Jack took the package from her, glancing at the grubby envelope covered with stamps and nearly illegible writing, and he admired Rebecca’s tenacity in deciphering it. He slipped the volume out, and weighed it in his hands. It was a ruled notebook, a diary or a journal. He realised that
he was looking at the back cover upside down, and he flipped it over. There was a hand-written title on the cover. He read it, and then read it again, barely taking it in. He coughed, and read it out loud: ‘“The Journal of Major General Charles Gordon, CB, Garrison Commander at Khartoum, 14 December 1884 to 25 January 1885”.’
He sat back, stunned. It was the lost final volume of General Gordon’s diary. He could scarcely bring himself to open it. This would surely at last reveal the truth of those last days in Khartoum. He pressed the journal against his chest, and then put it carefully back into the envelope, handing it back to Rebecca. ‘Yours for safe keeping. That may be the most extraordinary treasure of this whole quest. You can begin reading it to me in the car.’
Four and a half hours later, Jack pulled off the main road and drove down the narrow lane into the village where his great-great-grandfather had lived. It seemed a world away from the desert of Sudan and the war against the Mahdi, but these villages were the idealised image of England that many of the soldiers dreamed of while they were on campaign, and today they were often the places where the last residues of undiscovered papers and artefacts from those years were to be found. He had not been here for a long time, but he remembered the route through the picturesque village square and up the side lane to the row of half-timbered cottages, the rolling summits of the Brecon Beacons looming a few miles behind. He stopped outside the front gate, switched off the engine and enjoyed the silence after the drive, letting Rebecca sleep for a few minutes longer.
It had been an extraordinary few hours of revelation as she had picked her way through the diary. Gordon’s last entry on the morning of the day he died was a neatly written statement that Jack could remember now from memory: Major Mayne of the Royal Engineers has arrived, with a companion. He is to have this journal for safe keeping, so that it may be published and known to the world. Now I know I am to die. I have stayed with the people of Khartoum to the last.
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