Gold of the Ancients

by Graham Warren

  At several points along their journey a vastly oversized eagle had swooped down, cast a shadow over the entire boat, and had released a papyrus. Each had contained updates, news and even a little gossip from Ramses’ scribe, his Thoth.

  Rose, whose bruised face appeared to be back to normal – either that or any residual bruising had been covered by the expert application of makeup – suggested that it was far too early in the day, celebration or not, to be drinking red wine; to which Ramses replied, “Never! It is four thirty in the afternoon in Peru.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Not at all, but who would dare contradict the mighty Ramses?” He said this with a smirk and a now empty glass.

  “I would,” Rose said.

  “I would take issue as well.”

  “No more than I would expect from you, Bast.”

  “Me too.”

  “Kate, you disappoint me.”

  “Stand in line,” she muttered under her breath.

  “I believe you to be correct, my pharaoh.” Thoth refilled his glass.

  “Thoth! I so disappointed with you.” Thoth shot a somewhat wounded expression towards Cairo. “I not, but somebody had to say it!” The ensuing laughter must have been heard clear across the valley.

  This was the first time they had all been together for what had seemed like ages, though the young adventurers had only arrived back in Luxor late last night. It was also the first time they had seen their new home, though it had been mentioned at some length in the papyrus’ they had received. This was a home built for them to his personal design, according to Ramses, though they all knew he was taking credit for Gadeem’s plans. Whoever, whatever, however, it met with their approval.

  Kate, Alex, Cairo and Emmy had been invited to be in the lower kitchen of the Winter Palace directly after breakfast if they wished to see their future. They had. Immediately they had been whisked off in a craptor pulled wooden cart, driven by Ropet and Sanuba – who had put aside any previous animosity as they were clearly delighted to see the adventurers returned, and especially Cairo. The young adventurers had sped under the Nile and then on through twists and turns, screaming and laughing all the way.

  Upon leaving the wooden cart a curving rock cut staircase had brought them to where they were currently sitting. It had also brought them to Ramses, Nakhtifi, Rose, Gadeem and Bast. The Thoth’s of Ramses and Nakhtifi stood by, though behind, their respective pharaoh. Sobek rested himself in a semi standing position against a natural rock. He picked his teeth with the tip of an ibis’ beak whilst making sure that the Thoths felt his intimidation.

  The hawk headed god, Ra-Horakhty, had made himself comfortable in a far dark corner. His face was barely visible, though the solid gold feathers of his tunic glinted whenever he moved. Kate, Alex and Cairo had between them met the Ra-Horakhty of several pharaohs. Individually they had noticed Rose give far too many glances, and even a quick smile or two, in his direction, for this to be to be any other Ra-Horakhty than that of Merenptah. Emmy had never had the pleasure, but independently Kate, Alex and Cairo had come to the same conclusion. Strange, possibly a little worrying, as for him to be with them either Merenptah was nearby, or he had given his permission. However, Ramses had made it clear that they were totally safe, that they were amongst friends and could talk freely. He had said this before he had started on his beloved red wine, so this had to be the case.

  The laughter stopped as the room was showered in red light, meaning that somebody was at the door above. “You are nearest, so let’s see how this works.”

  “You asked for it.” Kate glowered at Alex before using just a little too much force on the lever which was disguised as a metre and a half high granite obelisk. The floor rose, leaving behind the ancients. Kate, Alex, Cairo, Emmy and Rose were now in a far less crowded room. Not just devoid of ancients, but also of ancient furniture. They and their modern furniture were at modern ground level, safe ground level, a level upon which ancients could never step. The door opened outwards. Kate swung it open with such ferocity that she nearly swept the elderly English couple off the veranda and back down the slope they had just walked up.

  “Is this the Carter House?” the gentleman asked as he adjusted his walking stick in a successful attempt to maintain his balance. “You know, Howard Carter; Tutankhamun, and all that.”

  “Yes … I do know. It’s over there.” Kate waved off to some vague point in the far distance.

  “Sorry for disturbing you. It’s just that it sounded as though there were lots of tourists here, and from this little map I was convinced that we were in the right place.”

  “No, just the four,” Kate corrected herself, “five of us here.”

  “I told him he had the wrong place, but would he listen to me,” the man’s wife said. As justification he held out a tourist map which was so badly drawn that it was a wonder that they had even found their way to Luxor’s west bank.

  Kate reached out to pull the door closed. Alex, his newly acquired phone to his ear, stopped her. He pointed down and to his right, to the carpark at the Temple of Hatshepsut. “Now please,” he said into the phone. The lights of a car flashed several times. “If you go with our driver, he will take you to Carter’s House. It’s much too far to walk in this heat, and do be careful going down. I know it doesn’t look very steep, but these little white rocks can sometimes be as dangerous as walking on marbles.”

  The elderly couple offered their thanks before, a little gingerly, going on their way.

  “You little goody two shoes.”

  “Kate! Honestly, what is the point of saving the world from bad people, if we ourselves behave worse than them?”

  Kate took in the view, the warmth, and smiled. “I will give you that one, because I like it here.”

  The here was a long low wooden building, built half way up a mound to the south of Hatshepsut’s temple, just beyond the Assasif tombs, and directly behind where Nakhtifi had originally been buried. It would have, just as equally, looked at home in America’s wild west. A wide veranda ran along the front of five large rooms. Due to the slope it was built into, each room only had a single window facing across the valley – protected by sturdy wooden shutters – and a solid door. Three bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom, were separated by a library and a lounge. There was no kitchen, as meals were to be supplied from the Winter Palace, which appealed to them all, for this was the home of Kate, Alex, Emmy and Cairo, if they wanted it … and they did, they really did!

  Kate moved the obelisk with much less force than previously, the room descended; the ancients appeared as ghosts through the floor. “That is really cool.” She was indeed happy.

  Cairo was bouncing up and down and clapping his hands in true excited Egyptian style.

  “It works really well. We can all sit together, yet a pull on that,” Alex pointed to the obelisk, “and we are safely out of the reach of ancients. Peace at last!” There was a pause. Alex’s face flushed. “I meant bad ancients. Ancients wanting to do us harm. Not any of you!” Everybody knew exactly what he had meant. No explanation had been needed.

  “The library works in exactly the same way,” Gadeem said with pride, “though this is the only room which connects with our underground tunnel system.” As if to prove its connection, lunch, which had been sent from the Winter Palace, arrived.

  Many conversations took place. They were informed that Aryamani and Henuttawy were expected anytime soon, and that Helios was to be the permanent guard at their new home. Apparently he had asked to have this role, though right now he was off getting to know the family and the area, as he had never been this far south before.

  “Not much use as a guard if he does not know who is family and who is not,” Ramses offered by way of explanation.

  After nearly two weeks it was clear to see that Gadeem remained incredibly relieved to have had Rose back. It showed in everything he said and did. He remained, however, more than a little upset that as it had been Cleopatra, Rose�
��s family, he and Ramses had been unable to get involved. He was also vocally furious that Rose had even considered taking on Cleopatra on her own, though he was secretly extremely proud.

  Bast, who would willingly do anything for Rose, was not at all pleased at effectively having been held prisoner by Cleopatra. “I don’t think I shall ever be able to wash her smell off of me.”

  “You could have left whenever you wanted.”

  “No, Ramses, I could not!”

  “Of course you could. Nobody can hold a god against their will … unless it is a god of their own, of course.” He gave the evil eye to his Thoth. “Don’t want you getting ideas now, do we!”

  “Never, my pharaoh.”

  Ramses laughed as he swirled his glass. “Come, sit and enjoy the red wine with me.” He turned to look at Nakhtifi’s Thoth, “You also, come on, sit with us.” He gestured to a free chair. “Today is a celebration. Let’s get rid of all this,” he waved an arm over the virtually untouched lunch, Cairo’s excepted of course, “and get some more wine.” The plates were hastily collected. Fresh wine and glasses appeared. There was even a new pitcher of ice-cold tamar-hindi.

  “Great leader or not, sometimes you are a real softie.” Emmy said.

  “Greatest leader, if you don’t mind.”

  “Yes, greatest leader. I could not disagree with that. I wouldn’t want to.”

  Alex raised his glass in agreement. Eventually they all did.

  “Rose,” Emmy asked, “how is Einstein getting on now that he knows his waiter is Caesarion?”

  “Apparently they are getting on like a house on fire. Caesarion had no idea what his mother was up to. Actually; would you believe it, he had no idea he was Caesarion. That came as a real shock to him.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Yes, Kate, I do … we all do.”

  “Well, I don’t! He must know who he is!”

  “Why must he know? You really do need to hear his side of the story before you judge. He was absolutely shocked to find out who he was … is!”

  “I do think Kate may have a point. I’m pretty sure he killed my mother?”

  Rose turned her chair towards the young adventurers. “There you are wrong, Alex, unless, of course, he can be in two places at the same time. Albert and I have chatted a lot about this in recent days. He confirms that neither of them left The Meeting Place anywhere around the time your mother was killed. The night and the following morning in question, they were together,” Rose saw the expression on Kate’s face and gestured for her not to say a word. “I don’t want to hear it! They spent all night and well into the next morning in the kitchen. Some boyish competition about making the perfect scone. Science verses traditional recipe.”

  “Who won?” Emmy asked.

  “We will never know.” There was a ripple of laughter from the ancients. Obviously the young adventurers were the only ones who had not heard this story before, and Rose was not going to give them the detailed version now. “I think it best if we call it a draw, though they would never agree that it was. What started out as a good natured disagreement, with both protesting their scones to be the best, turned into a night of baking and then a food fight. The whole place had to be deep cleaned before they could reopen, and when they did, they had nothing to serve.”

  “Okay, Rose,” Kate said as she moved to the edge of her seat, “I know that you have been through a lot, an awful lot, and I do like you, I really do, but this is Einstein we are talking about. That seems like a flipping lame alibi. What were they really up to?”

  “I could see Einstein … Albert … being that childish. Yes, Kate, I really could. You haven’t met him.” Alex was treading on thin ice. “Do you remember, Emmy, when he talked about Isaac Newton and his laws of gravity?”

  “Yes, yes I do. Let me think. Yes … he said something along the lines of – It is not good enough to know that the apple falls from the tree, we have to know why it falls. Most importantly, we must be able to … no, that’s wrong. Most importantly we must mathematically prove that any theory holds good in all circumstances.”

  “So … what’s your point?”

  “Emmy isn’t finished.” Alex wished that Kate would hold back on her comments, just once.

  “My point is, Kate, he told us in a wonderfully innocent way how he used to pick up windfalls on his walks. These he would place in a basket within arm’s reach of his desk. He told us of how he would throw the rottenest one, possibly several, at a spot on the wall, which he had dedicated as ‘Newton’s tree’, whenever Newton’s theories were at odds with his own. He laughed so much as he told us of several mishaps where he had forgotten that he had had a visitor in the room. Hitting them with the rotten apple rather than ‘Newton’s tree’. It was obvious that he didn’t forget at all, he just enjoyed his boyish fun. So yes, I could see that he would enjoy a food fight.”

  “His ‘Newton’s tree’ so to speak,” added Rose. “When we were last together in Norfolk he told me that we have the same wild streak in us. He pointed to his hair and laughed as he said, ‘You cannot get wilder than this. I have the hair, you have the hutzpah!’ He really does have a great sense of fun. Not at all the stuffy professor type, but to get back to Caesarion, this is a story which we have only been able to unravel during the time you have been travelling back to Luxor … Would you like to tell them?” She looked directly at Ramses.

  “Would it interrupt my imbibing?” Rose nodded. “In that case I shall leave the details to you.” Ramses held out his glass for a refill.

  “Nakhtifi?” Apart from a genuinely warm welcome, he had failed to utter a word. By the way he placed both hands out in front of him, he was not about to start talking now.

  “Better if we leave it to you, Rose,” Bast said.

  “Okay then. I am going to keep this short and sweet. Please, no interruptions until I have finished.” Rose waited for a nod of agreement from Kate before continuing. “Cleopatra would do anything for Caesarion, because by promoting him she would enhance her own power. This is the first of two things we all know as an undisputable truth. The second being that Caesarion, as an ancient, was not anywhere in Egypt.

  “Cleopatra knew what she wanted of Caesarion even before he was born, to be acknowledged by Julius Caesar as his son. Caesarion’s very conception was fuelled by her craving for power. She was Greek and Queen of Egypt, but that was not enough, not for Cleopatra. She wanted to rule the whole of the known world. Caesarion was her way to achieve this as Julius Caesar was the most powerful man in the world.”

  Ramses prodded his Thoth so hard that he almost spilt his red wine.

  “Ju, ju, just,” Thoth stuttered, “in case you misunderstood Rose just then, what she meant to say was, whilst Ramses is the most powerful and benevolent ruler in the world, Julius Caesar was the most powerful tyrannical living man at that time. Though only at that time.”

  “Ramses!”

  “Sorry, Rose, couldn’t help myself,” he said with a smirk. “Do carry on, but do try and not make it so dry!”

  “Please, you carry on. You can tell this better than me.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Okay, I will continue, but no more interruptions.” Ramses nodded. “That goes for you as well, Thoth.” He nodded, though with much less certainty. If Ramses told him to, he would have no option except to interrupt. “I thought that I was keeping it short,” she addressed her comment towards the young adventurers before glancing back towards Ramses, “but obviously not short enough for some. Here, if possible, is the even shorter version. We now know for a fact that Caesarion could have had no part in Cleopatra’s recent plans. This is because we have proved, beyond any doubt, that he had no idea he was the son of Cleopatra. This really has taken some piecing together. Suffice to say that Cleopatra understood that the Greeks, Egyptians and the Romans would all, at one time or another, try and kill Caesarion. That is why from the day her sister gave birth to him, Cleopatra had hidden him, taking anot
her child as her own.

  “Yes, you heard correctly, from birth. As the real Caesarion grew, he never spent more than six months in the same area, with the same name, or with the same ‘parents’. The murder of Caesar tore a great hole in her plan. This is where things really started to go wrong for Cleopatra. It ended in her suicide and that of Marc Antony, as well as the death of Caesarion. You can read all about that in history books. What you cannot read is that it was not Caesarion who was murdered by Rome. It was the boy Cleopatra had brought up as Caesarion, the boy she had expected to be murdered. She had sent him off with a heavy gold ring bearing Caesarion’s name, so there could be no doubt when Rome’s assassins found him. And Cleopatra made sure that they did.

  “In the afterlife she had the plan of gaining what she could not achieve in life, total dominance. She just needed an opening. With the warlock dead, it gave her the opening she needed as we all took our eye off the ball. No good looking at me like that, Ramses, we all did and you know it!” He peered intently into his wine glass, as he made an over exaggerated attempt to remove a piece of non-existent cork. “I shall take that as a yes. Cleopatra had just one problem, she needed the real Caesarion if she was going to be able to achieve her aims. Only he would be able to bring in the Roman ancients on her side. She must have sent people everywhere, and once he was located, at The Meeting Place, her plan suddenly had an urgency.” Rose paused.

  Cairo broke the silence. “So Einstein know waiter in Meeting Place Caesarion, but Caesarion not know he Caesarion. That crazy.”

  “He knows now. We all know now. Still not convinced, Kate?”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Though we did not realise it at the time, Cleopatra was having to constantly reshape her plan. Sorry, Alex, but your mother was killed for no greater reason than to keep Quentin out of Egypt, though I think you had already come to that conclusion. Later she decided that keeping him out of Egypt was not enough, as he would have seen and catalogued many of the items which now bore the name of Caesarion. He would have realised that the name had been altered, so he had to be turned. You, Alex, were part of this plan. A plan which gave them many options.”