Curse of the Kings (4 page)

So there was digging in Carter Meadow and important tenants at Giza House. We learned that although Sir Edward was a widower he had two children son, Tybalt, who was grown up and at the universitynd a daughter, Sabina, who was about the same age as Theodosia and myself and was therefore to share our lessons.

It was some time before I saw Tybalt but I decided to dislike him before I set eyes on him, largely because Sabina spoke of him with awe and reverence. She did not so much love as adore him. He was omniscient and omnipotent according to her. He was handsome, in fact godlike.

don believe anyone is as good as that,I said scornfully, glaring at Hadrian, forcing him to agree with me. Theodosia could think what she liked; her opinion was unimportant.

Hadrian looked from me to Sabina and came down on my side. o,he declared, obody is.

obody but Tybalt,insisted Sabina.

Sabina talked constantly and never minded whether anyone was listening or not. I told Hadrian this was because she lived in that strange house with her absent-minded father and those servants, two of whom were very strange indeed, for they were Egyptians named Mustapha and Absalam and wore long white robes and sandals. I had heard from our rectory cook that they gave the other servants the reepsand with all the peculiar things that were in that house and those two gliding about so that you never knew whether they were spying on you and you not seeing them t was a queer household.

Sabina was pretty; she had fair curls, and big grey eyes with long golden lashes and a little heart-shaped face. Theodosia, who was quite plain, very soon adored her. I quickly saw that their friendship strengthened the alliance between Hadrian and myself. Sometimes I used to think it had been better before the Traverses came because then the three of us made a pleasant little trio. I admit that I bullied them a little. Dorcas was always telling me that I must stop trying to organize everyone and believing that what I wanted for them was the best from every point of view. It was a fact that although Hadrian and Theodosia were the children of the big house and I came from the impecunious rectory and had been allowed to have lessons in their schoolroom as a favor, I did behave rather as though I were the daughter of Keverall Court and the others were the outsiders. I had explained to Dorcas that it was just because Hadrian could never make up his mind and Theodosia was too silly to have any ideas about anything.

Then there was Sabina, good-natured, her lovely hair always falling into place in a manner most becoming, while my thick straight dark locks were always escaping in disorder from anything with which I tried to bind them. Her grey eyes would sparkle with gaiety when she spoke of frivolous things or shine with fervor when she talked of Tybalt. She was a charming girl, whose presence had changed the entire atmosphere of our schoolroom.

Through her we learned of life in Giza House. How her father was shut in his room for days and silent-footed Mustapha or Absalam took his meals to him on trays. Sabina had luncheon in a small dining room just off the schoolroom at Keverall as I did each day except Saturdays and Sundays, but in Giza House when her father was working she often had meals alone or with her companion-housekeeper, Tabitha Grey, who gave her lessons at the piano. She always referred to her as Tabby and I christened her the Grey Tabby which amused them all. I pictured her as a middle-aged woman, with greying dusty-looking hair, grey skirts, and dull muddy-colored blouses. I was very surprised eventually to meet a striking-looking youngish woman.

I told Sabina that she was no good at describing anything. She had made Grey Tabby sound like a dowdy old woman and I was sure that that wonder hero Tybalt would turn out to be a pale-faced youth with eyes ruined by looking at too much crabbed writing on ancient manuscriptshich he must have done, mustn he, since he was so cleveround-shouldered and knowing absolutely nothing about anything but long dead people and what weapons they had used in battle.

ne day you may be able to see for yourself,said Sabina laughing.

We could hardly wait. She had so played on our imaginationsarticularly mine which Alison had once said worked overtimehat this miraculous brother of hers was never far from my thoughts. I was longing to see him. I had so built up this picture of the stooping bespectacled scholar that I believed it to be true and had forced Hadrian to do the same. Theodosia took Sabina version. fter all,she said, abina seen him. You haven.

eople get bemused,I said. he sees him through rose-colored spectacles.

We could hardly wait when the time came for him to come down from Oxford. Sabina was exalted. ow you will see for yourselves.One morning she came in in tears because Tybalt was not coming, after all. He was going up to Northumberland on a dig and he would no doubt spend the entire vacation up there. Sir Edward was going to join him.

Instead of Tybalt we had Evan Callum, who was a friend of Tybalt. Wishing to earn a little money, he was going to spend the period before he went back to the university grounding us in the rudiments of archaeology, a subject in which he was quite proficient.

I forgot my disappointment about Tybalt and threw myself with fervor into my new studies. I was much more interested in the subject than the others. Sometimes in the afternoons I would go down to Carter Meadow with Evan Callum and he would show me something of the practical work which had to be done.

Once I saw Sir Ralph there. He came over to speak to me.

nterested, eh?he said.

I replied that I was.

ound any more bronze shields?

o. I haven found anything.

He gave me a little push. inds don come often. You started off with yours.His jaw wagged in the amused way, and I had a notion that he was rather pleased to see me there.

One of the workers who had come down with the party showed me how to piece a broken pot together. irst aid,he called it, until it could be treated properly and perhaps find its way into a museum. He showed me how to pack a piece of pottery which had been put together in this irst-aidmanner and which was to be sent away to the experts who would restore it and place it in its period where it might or might not betray some little detail of how life was lived four thousand years before.

I had dreamed of finding something in Carter Meadow; golden ornaments, things that I had heard had been found in tombs. This was very different. I was disappointed for a while and then I began to develop a burning enthusiasm for the task itself. I could think of little else than the wonder of uncovering the record of the rocks.

Our lessons with Evan Callum were taken in the afternoons, because the mornings were spent with Miss Graham or Oliver Shrimpton learning what were called the three Rs. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. In addition, Theodosia, Sabina, and I had to do needlework with Miss Graham and three mornings a week we worked for an hour on our samplers. The alphabet had to be worked, a proverb, our names, and the date. Naturally we chose the shortest proverb we could find but even so the task was laborious. Horrible little cross stitches on a piece of cotton and if one stitch was too large or too small it had to be unpicked and put right. I was in revolt against such time wasting and I was so frustrated that my sampler suffered through it. There was music and we strummed on the piano under

Miss Graham supervision, but now we had Grey Tabby it was decided that she should give the music lessons. So with our periodic lessons in archaeology our education was running on quite unconventional lines. We had our teachers from three sourcesiss Graham from Keverall Court, Grey Tabby and Evan Callum through Giza House, and from the rectory Oliver Shrimpton. Dorcas was delighted. It was an excellent way, she said, of three families pooling their educational resources and providing an excellent education for the young people involved. She doubted that anywhere in the country a girl was getting such a well-grounded training. She hoped, she added, that I was making full use of it.

What did intrigue me were the sessions with Evan Callum. I told him that when I was grown up I should go with expeditions to the far places of the world. He replied that he thought that as a female I might find this difficult unless I married an archaeologist; but all the same he encouraged me. It was gratifying to have such an apt pupil. We were all interested but my natural enthusiasm was perhaps more intense and more obvious.

I became particularly fascinated by the Egyptian scene. There was so much to be discovered there. I loved hearing about that old civilization; the gods that were worshiped, the dynasties, the temples that had been discovered; I caught my enthusiasm from Evan. here a treasure store in the hills of the desert, Judith,he used to say.

Of course I pictured myself there, making fantastic discoveries, receiving the congratulations of people like Sir Edward Travers.

I had imagined myself having long conversations with him but he, I must say, was a disappointment. He never seemed to see any of us. He had a strange far-away look in his eyes as though he were looking far back into the past.

expect that awful old Tybalt is just like him,I said to Hadrian.

Tybalt had become a new word which I had introduced into our vocabulary. It meant ean, despicable.Hadrian and I used to tease Sabina with it.

don care,she said, othing you say can change Tybalt.

I was fascinated by Giza House though and although I was a hopeless musician I used to look forward to going there. As soon as I entered the house I would become excited. There was something peculiar about it. inister,I told Hadrian who agreed as he usually did with me.

In the first place it was dark. The bushes which surrounded the house might have been responsible for that, but in the house there were so manyrich velvet curtainsnot only at windows but over doors and alcoves in which were often strange images. It was so thickly carpeted that you rarely heard people come and go and I always had the sensation in that house that I was being watched.

There was a strange old woman who lived at the top of this house in what appeared to be an apartment of her own. Sabina referred to her as Old Nanny Tester.

ho is she?I demanded.

he was my mother Nanny and Tybalt and mine.

hat she doing up there?

he just lives up there.

ut you don want a nanny now surely.

e don turn old servants out when they have served us many years,said Sabina haughtily.

believe she a witch.

elieve what you like, Judith Osmond. She old Nanny Tester.

he spies on us. She always peering out of the window and dodging back when we look up.

h don take any notice of her,said Sabina.

Every time I went to the place I looked up to the top window for Nanny Tester. I had convinced myself that it was a strange house in which anything could happen.

The drawing room was the most normal room, but even that had an Oriental look. There were several Chinese vases and images which Sir Edward had picked up in China. There were some beautiful pictures on the wallselicate and in pastel shades; there was a big cabinet in which were Chinese figureshere were dragons and fat Buddhas with sly sleepy looks and thin ones sitting with apparent comfort in a position which I had tried unsuccessfully to copy; there were ladies with inscrutable faces and mandarins with cruel ones. But the grand piano gave the place an air of normality and it was on this that we strummed out our lessons under the tuition of Grey Tabby who was as enigmatical as one of the Chinese ladies in the cabinet.

Whenever I had an opportunity I would peep into other rooms forcing Hadrian to look with me. He was reluctant but he was afraid not to do as I wished because he knew that I would call him a coward if he refused.

We had been studying with Evan Callum some of the lore of old Egypt and I was greatly fascinated. He gave us an account of some recent discoveries there in which Sir Edward Travers had been involved; and then he went on to give us a little insight into the history of that country.

When I listened to Evan Callum I would be transported out of the schoolroom into the temples of the gods. I listened avidly to the story of the self-begotten god Raften known as Amen Ra; and his son Osiris who with Isis begot the great god Horus. He showed us pictures of the masks which priests wore during religious ceremonies and told us that each god was represented by one of the masks.

he idea being,he explained, hat the great gods of the Egyptians possessed all the strengths and virtues of men, but in addition they had one attribute of an animal; and this animal was their particular sign. Horus was the hawk because his eyes saw all and quickly.I pored over the pictures he showed us. I was an apt pupil.

But I think what interested me most were the accounts of burials when the bodies of the important dead were embalmed and put in their tombs and there left to rest for thousands of years. With them would often be buried their servants who might have been killed merely that they might accompany them and remain their servants in the new life as in the old. Treasure was stored in their tombs that they might not suffer poverty in the future.

his custom, of course,Evan explained to us, as led to many of the tombs being robbed. Throughout the centuries daring men have plundered them daring indeed for it is said that the Curse of the Pharaohs descends on those who disturb their eternal rest.

I was very interested to hear how it was possible to keep a person body for centuries. he embalming process,Evan explained, s one which was perfected three thousand years before the birth of Christ. It was a secret and no one has ever really discovered how the ancient Egyptians did it so expertly.

It was absorbing. There were books with pictures. I was never tired of talking of this fascinating subject; I wanted to ignore other lessons for the sake of going on with Evan.

Sabina said she had seen a mummy. They had had one at Giza once.

Evan talked to her about it and I was a little envious that Sabina who had not taken particular note of it should have had the opportunity which I should have made such use of.

t was in a sort of coffin,said Sabina.