Sand and ancient flesh were crunching under our horses’ feet. We were riding over ancient bones.
Ahmed let out a whoop of joy. Finally he was home: a lush Nile-watered village of mud huts and modest stone dwellings. On the outskirts there rose a handsome house. Shining with fresh whitewash, adorned by curved windows and balconies intricately carved in wood. Its front was sheltered by rows of palms, their long necks swaying gently in the breeze. As we came closer we could see that the windows were shuttered, the whole house wore a forlorn air.
“Something is wrong.” Ahmed halted his horse outside the gate. Suddenly he was ashen-faced.
“You’re nervous, that’s all.” I tried to soothe him.
“My darling … Pepi …” Ahmed’s voice trailed into a whisper.
“Who is—” I began, thinking perhaps he was mentioning some brother or friend I had not heard of, but he cut me off.
“My best friend. My hunting dog, Pepi. He is an Arabian Saluki. He always comes out barking like a mad thing. Nothing can stop him. He has a sense for my return. Turn back, Kit, I beg you … and you, Miss Salter. This is no place for ladies … Please.”
“We’re not ladies, we’re your friends. Whatever happens, Ahmed, we are with you.” I was wasting my breath. Ahmed wasn’t listening. He pushed open the gate which was hanging brokenly off the latch. Without a backward glance, he strode toward the house. I believed, just then, he had forgotten our existence.
“Come on,” I said to the others. Waldo and Isaac followed me along with my aunt, who seemed scarcely bothered, as she trotted behind us.
“A nice ’ouse zis,” Champlon said, pausing by a bush that covered the wall and was absolutely packed with blossoms that looked like wisps of bright pink tissue paper. “Built of ze t’ick, solid limestone. I stayed in an ’ouse like zis in T’ebes. It vas perfectly cool in ze afternoon.”
“Try and think of other people for once,” I snapped and then I saw something that made me stop in my tracks. Lying half concealed by the flowering bush was an animal. A dog. Blood trickled from the bullet wound in its back to form a puddle under its haunches. Kneeling down, I touched it with the tip of my finger. The dog, a lean hunter, had died recently enough for its fur to be still warm. This must be Pepi, Ahmed’s beloved dog.
A presentiment of danger surged through me. Shouting out at the top of my voice I raced to grab my friend and pull him back outside. My fingers closed on air. Ahmed had already pushed open the front door and disappeared inside his home.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Waldo shouldered ahead of me as I tried to follow Ahmed. The door banged behind us, blocking out all but a glimmer of light. We caught up with Ahmed as he entered the living room. It had been ransacked; shards of pottery over the floors, rugs torn to shreds, books turned out of their shelves and scattered. The stuffing of chairs had been ripped out and the wood itself smashed to smithereens. Not a single ornament or piece of furniture had been left unbroken.
A human tornado had blown through here.
Ahmed muttered to himself; he had forgotten us and was speaking in Arabic. He hurried out of the room back into the corridor. As we followed a shot rang out, missing Waldo by a hair’s breadth. I dived down and Waldo flattened himself against the wall. Only Ahmed remained where he was, frozen, as if he didn’t understand the language of bullets. Another shot rang out. This time it was wildly off target and embedded itself in the ceiling.
“The stairs,” Waldo hissed.
An ebony banister curled up the center of the house. I could see the gunfire was coming from a shadowy figure on the landing.
“I’ll try and crawl over there. See if I can surprise them.” The corridor was so dark I felt sure the gunman was just firing wildly.
“No!” Ahmed said.
“I’m the smallest,” I insisted. “I’ll have the best chance.”
Our friends outside must have had heard the shots. Monsieur Champlon always carried his pistol. As I started to crawl along the floor I was praying he would find a way in, that he would save us.
“I can’t let you do this,” Ahmed whispered to me. Then he stepped out from the shadows into the center of the passage where he was haloed by a faint rim of light. Very slowly he lifted his hands above his head in a gesture of surrender:
“Do not hurt my friends. I am Ahmed El Kassul. Son of Sheikh Mustapha El Kassul. It is me you want.”
Without warning, the pistol clattered down, landing almost in front of my nose. Quick as a flash I reached out, grabbed it and rose up, holding it steady. I swear to you I was ready to fire, but what I saw made no sense to me. An old lady in a black headscarf stood on the landing, tottering against the wall. Her jittery hands had clearly dropped the pistol. As I watched, bewildered, she almost fell down the stairs. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. She collapsed at Ahmed’s feet in a crumpled heap.
“My mother,” he explained to us as he bent down and gently scooped her up. His arms closed around her and I saw he was crying as well.
This was a private moment. Waldo and I should not be here. We retreated back into the ransacked room, leaving Ahmed and his mother to their embrace.
“The poor old dame,” Waldo said, looking around for a moment at the scene of devastation. “She probably thought the villains who did this had come back for more. She must have panicked. She was a menace with that gun.”
“More of a danger to herself than anything. Still, she was very brave.”
Waldo nodded but we were not left long to our reflections because my aunt appeared, Champlon and Isaac in her wake.
“Goodness, they could do with a spot of redecoration!” my aunt said, staring around at the awful mess. She bent down and picked up a broken picture frame, which had contained a piece of Arabic writing.
“I ’eard shooting, is zis not so?” Champlon asked.
I explained about Ahmed’s mother. I believed the Velvet Mob must have been here before us. This quieted even my aunt and it was while we were all standing there, feeling subdued and helpless that Ahmed turned up at the door, his eyes red-rimmed from weeping. He came to me and spoke softly in my ear. I nodded and with a quick explanation to the others followed him.
Mustapha El Kassul’s bedchamber was on the second floor of the house, a simple, white-washed room cooled by breezes flowing through the arched window. He was lying in a low bed, propped up against the head-board. This room had also been ransacked. Tiny wisps of feathers were everywhere, in clumps on the floor, a few fluttering in the air. The explanation lay by the bed; a heap of shredded pillows.
Looking upon Ahmed’s father I felt a thrill of recognition. As if I knew that bony face. Of course he was very like his son, but that wasn’t it. I had glimpsed him before, looming out of a puddle of spilled water in the medium’s parlor. A fresh bruise ran down one side of the old man’s skeletal face. It was livid, beginning to turn purple. Someone had hit him and very hard. Someone who clearly had no respect for old age or the sickness so clear upon his face. It seemed that Mustapha had only woken up from his coma the day before yesterday, about the time we set foot in Egypt and the scarab returned to its native soil. Foolishly I expected Ahmed’s father to speak no English, but he was fluent in my language, though with more of a pronounced accent than his son:
“Welcome, Miss Kit, my son has told me how you have helped him.”
“Thank you.”
“You have been a good and true friend to him at a time when he needed this support, more than anything else. For that I am truly grateful. My friend …” Mustapha fell silent, struggling to sit up. His son took his elbow and gently helped him up.
“We have always been fortunate in our son. Even when he has been reckless I know that he will never do what is wrong … when I depart Ahmed will be the head of the family.”
“No.” Ahmed burst out angrily. “Now you are well again I will not hear this talk.”
“It is not talk my boy, it is a fact. I have only been granted a short visit in thi
s life. I know this for sure and you will have to face it. Very soon, maybe only days, I will be gone. I am not going to tell you that I have no fear of this …” he paused a moment, and that moment was only for his son. “I have had a long life … a good one.”
Ahmed bent his head.
“A heavy burden. I know you Ahmed, you will bear it well. Now, my boy, I want to talk of something else: Ptah Hotep.”
“His scarab,” I burst out, though it would have been more polite to hold my tongue. “We know it is the clue to treasure.”
“Of sorts.”
“Gold?”
“Something far more valuable.”
“Diamonds?”
“Words.”
“Words? But words aren’t treasure!”
“Wisdom is a treasure, Miss Kit. The words Ptah Hotep had inscribed all those millennia ago are more precious than diamonds to those who value wisdom. How do you feel after words of anger are uttered? Does not the very air around you change? Does not the heart sink? As words of evil spread misery, words of wisdom bring enchantment to our lives.
“As my son may have told you, Ptah Hotep was not just a vizier to the Pharaoh. More importantly he was a great sage, one whose wisdom has lived on in Egypt, handed down over the ages from father to son. His flame has burned for many, many centuries keeping all of us warm. For countless generations our family have faith fully carried out a sacred task to preserve Ptah Hotep’s soul according to the traditions of the ancients.”
“But the scarab … the mummy … it is all gone,” Ahmed whispered.
“Yes, the mummy is gone and so is the scarab but not all is lost. Centuries ago my ancestors moved the book—the magical book—in which Ptah Hotep set down his thoughts.”
The old man in the midst of the wreckage of his room should have been a pitiful sight. Our talk, however, had re-kindled the blaze inside him and his eyes were bright. Hard to believe this was the same, dying man I had seen huddled in his bed a few minutes ago.
“I am telling you of the oldest book in the world!
“Just imagine. Thousand of years before the birth of Jesus. Before Mohammed, before Buddha, before all the sages who men around the world revere. This, my son, is our link with the very dawn of man’s time on earth. This is what those villains want. The secret hiding place of the World’s Oldest Book.”
In a flash it all made sense to me. That was why the Baker Brothers were studying my father’s scholarly work. The ancient manuscript Papa had mentioned, the Papyrus Prisse, was a mere copy of the world’s oldest book. It was inscribed thousands of years after Ptah Hotep’s death and was only a pale reflection of the genuine article. We knew nothing of the contents of the real papyrus, but the legend surrounding it spoke of wonders beyond compare. What would really drive men like the Bakers, who had all the gold and diamonds they could ever want? What did they yearn to possess?
“They did not care who they destroyed to seek this Book of Wonder and Wisdom, this book that can confer blessings and curses,” the old man’s croaking voice continued. “Why such people seek to possess this book I do not know. They will never truly understand it with such greed in their hearts.”
“They will rot forever,” Ahmed’s mother burst out. “The mummy’s curse is upon them.”
“The mummy’s curse?” I echoed, remembering how Ahmed had said the loss of the scarab had cursed his village.
“Superstition,” his father said.
“Stop!” Ahmed’s mother burst out. Her headscarf had fallen away revealing wild white hair. “Curse is TRUE!”
Mustapha turned to his wife and spoke to her in Arabic. She nodded her head, somewhat sullenly, and fell silent.
“Who were the people who did this to you?” I ventured nervously.
The old man shrugged, indifferently. “Lost souls.”
“Fat woman her skin like sour cream,” Ahmed’s mother burst out, unstoppable. “She order everyone and they beat Ahmed’s father. And there is two white ghost men who do nothing, they just look. The fat one she is evil I can see it. She will destroy anything. They are going to kill Ahmed’s father so I agree. They show me scarab and I talk. I read the clues on scarab. I tell where book is buried.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Siwa. I say nothing else because I cannot tell anything else. They satisfied, they go.”
“It is an oasis in the wilderness of the Western desert,” Ahmed muttered. “It will take them weeks to trek there, if they are able to make it. I do not believe any Englishman has ever traveled there.”
“Will they be able to find the book’s hiding place?” I asked Ahmed’s father anxiously. “Is it possible, if all they know is Siwa?”
There was no answer. Ahmed’s father had sunk back on his bed, where he lay gazing vacantly at the ceiling. His flame had dimmed, he looked what he was: an old man very close to death. “Who knows?” he murmured. “When they moved the book my ancestors engraved a clue in the scarab. If they can read this, who knows?”
It was time to go. I could see my departure in Ahmed’s sad face. At the door I turned back and took one more look at Sheikh Mustapha El Kassul, knowing in my very bones that it would be the last time I saw him.
Chapter Twenty-nine
We left the village before the muezzin’s call to prayers, well before first light. Ahmed and a young Berber man, who was said to be the best tracker in the tribe, went first. Waldo, Isaac, Champlon, my aunt and I followed in a straggling line, bumping up and down on our own camels. Bringing up the rear were five tribesmen, accompanied by ten camels weighed down with waterskins and food. All of the men were prepared to fight for us, Ahmed had assured us. As we set off for the fabled oasis in the desert I reflected that we were now a true caravanserai—following in the footsteps of the merchant parties who had journeyed through these trackless wastes for centuries.
My aunt trotted beside me as the sun rose, dusting the sand dunes with a pink blush. As you can imagine, she was in her element. She had chosen to dress as a desert Arab, a flowing white robe, a scarf tied around her head, simple sandals. I had been happy to follow her lead for the male robes looked loose and comfortable.
“Good to finally get some decent exploring in,” Aunt Hilda grunted.
“Has anyone, any English explorer I mean, ever been to Siwa?” I asked.
“I think the world’s first true account of Siwa will be from Hilda Salter.”
“And Gaston Champlon,” the Frenchman put in.
“Of course, monsieur,” my aunt said, with a twinkle. “I wasn’t thinking of the French. I meant the English-Speaking World!”
What can I tell you of our desert ride? Imagine a huge space, bigger than your home town, bigger than England herself. Imagine this space is built purely of sand, a vast ocean of the stuff. Dunes rise and fall but all is bare and there is scarcely a bit of a tree, bush or living thing to be seen. I was told that our guides could tell one dune from another. I sincerely hoped so, for to me one heap of sand looked much like another and there is no road through the desert. My description might sound very grim but that is not the whole picture. I swear to you there is beauty here: the golden sands; the fantastic shapes whipped up by the wind; the stunning ridges of salt—but my gosh it is a very bleak sort of beauty.
By the end of the first day’s hard riding my eyes were again red from the fine stream of sand that irritated them, despite my headscarf. Breathing was a trial because the hot air dried out the membranes of my nose and made every breath a fiery torture. My throat ached with longing for a drink but Ahmed had warned us we had to ration our water most carefully. The way through the desert was perilous. If we did not conserve our food and water and even more crucially find some pasture for our camels to feed, we could easily die here under the merciless sun. Egyptians believe that in the desert a camel’s welfare is more important than its owner’s. Camels can survive at the very most for two weeks without food, living off the fat stores in their humps, but if they sicken and die then their m
asters are truly done for!
Even Champlon and my aunt were tiring as the days wore on. Only Ahmed and his men seemed to be thriving. In his desert costume: turban, striped gown, colored scarves wound round his waists jangling with pistols and knives, Ahmed looked like a bandit prince. Even though at thirteen years old he was the youngest of them, the men of his Berber tribe respected his authority. I gathered that his father Sheikh El Kassul commanded respect from all these men and I was glad of it, because we were truly in the wilds journeying where few westerners had ever set foot. Our lives depended on Ahmed’s men and they in turn on their camels.
At times, I confess, my heart sank and my spirits were weak. Waldo I knew was going through the same thing. As for Isaac, he had bottled it all up again and it was hard to know what he was thinking. Why had we ever volunteered for this hardship? And then I thought of Rachel, traveling through the desert with another caravan and my heart was stronger. If not for the Book and the scarab—love for my friend would give me the strength to endure this journey.
By the end of the tenth day all of us had toughened up a little. I had learned to wind my scarf low over my eyebrows so as to keep out the sand and grit. I had learned to breathe evenly, despite the pain in my nostrils. I was even starting to enjoy the camel riding having learned not to sit astride the beast, which makes your thighs ache, but perch with my legs wrapped around the front hump. Maybe I was becoming more of a desert explorer because I was even starting to be able to tell the difference between various types of dunes and to spot where a water-course might lie. We spotted gazelles, desert rats and hares. My favorite part of each day, however, was the evening when we unsaddled, set up our simple cloth tents and cooked a frugal meal over a camp fire.
The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis Page 16
