Passing into the Library, I hear the click of the door closing behind me. I glance around the vast space again. With its gilded bookcases and ceiling, thousands of leather-bound volumes, sumptuous cerise velvet sofas, and a roaring fire within a chocolate brown marble hearth regardless of the warm night, the Library has always felt like the inside of a book to me. It is an exquisite invitation to curl up and be ferried to other times and places. But it is not a place to be during my very own ball.
Just then, a muffled sound emanates from the adjoining room, the Small Library that faces north. Is it the sound of a throat clearing? Is it the person I’ve been waiting for? Dare I investigate? Or should I scurry back to the ball and hope my absence wasn’t noticed? Praying that it is not my father—how furious he’d be to find me here, I think—I tiptoe past the columns into the second library chamber, the one housing my father’s desk. One of the great treasures of Highclere, the desk came from Napoleon’s suite at the Château de Fontainebleau. How many times have I seen Papa proudly peek at the letterCunder the arm of the chair, a sign that Napoleon himself owned it when he was consul and not yet emperor.
There, with an open book in one hand and an object in the other, stands the brilliant Mr. Howard Carter. I race toward him. “Mr. Carter! I thought you’d never get here!”
As I draw as close as I dare to the formidable man, I see a pleasedhalf smile peeking out from under his thick mustache and a gleam in his dark, hooded eyes. I consider this reaction from the usually stoical Mr. Carter to be quite the victory, and I beam back at him.
Even though a smile is fixed in place on his lips, he grumbles, “Well, it was no easy matter to extricate myself from the British Museum.”
“Even for me?” I give him a coy glance.
“Especially for you.” He half snorts in laughter. “You might be my most discerning colleague. The list of questions you wanted me to ask Mr. Wallis Budge was positively daunting.”
I thrill to the name “colleague.” The fact that the esteemed archaeologist Mr. Howard Carter would even consider me “discerning” is compliment enough. He’s been quietly tutoring me in the history and archaeology of ancient Egypt every summer since I was a child—save for a stint during the war—and it’s exhilarating that he thinks of me as more than a student. Even if he’s only indulging me, he never says anything without at least a kernel of truth.
“So, whatdidMr. Budge have to say about the artifact?” I ask about the British Museum Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, pointing to the object in Mr. Carter’s hand. “Is it what we think it is?” My heart is racing with the possibility.
“Mr. Budge thinks wemayhave hit the mark. He’s notoriously cagey and noncommittal, though.”
I have to restrain a squeal. “Can you tell me what he said? I’ve been waiting and waiting for your return from London to hear.”
“I’ve got all night. It’s not as if I plan on attendingyourball,” he says, only half in jest. Of course, Mr. Carter has been invited to the Highclere ball; he’s our guest for the entire summer, as he has been for many summers before. My father, whose full, rather long, and unwieldy title is George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, has been Mr. Carter’s archaeological patron for thirteen years. Every winter Papa decamps with Mr. Carter to Luxor, where he spends his days in the Egyptian desert, overseeing excavations with Mr. Carter, a small army of locals, and occasionally my mother. Never me or Porchey, much to my chagrin.
We all know better than to insist Mr. Carter attend the ball, and ithas nothing to do with the fact that he was raised in a distinctly middle-class home with an artist father. The real truth is that he loathes hobnobbing almost as much as I do. The primary difference between us is that he has the option to refuse attendance, while I do not. The merry-go-round of dinners and dances and house parties with the constant change of dresses isn’t the life I want. It isn’t the life of purpose I seek.
Mr. Carter places the tiny object in my white-gloved palm with a mix of reverence and care. Bringing the one-inch, blue-glazed scarab close, I study the soapstone figurine of a beetle, its surface still amazingly shiny after three thousand years. He and my father unearthed it just before the war during an excavation at my father’s archaeological concession at the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, beforealldigs were suspended. This object, like many of the smaller artifacts discovered during that time, sat in storage while Highclere became a hospital during the war. It only resurfaced when Papa and I sorted through the boxes and placed his favorite objects in his specially constructed cases in the Music Room, built explicitly to show off his Egyptian treasures. This little beetle did not make the cut—gold necklaces and bracelets, bronze and electrum statues, a rare gaming board, and larger alabaster beauties outshone it—but it certainly caught my attention.
This summer, Mr. Carter and I are scrutinizing the ignored and rejected objects from those boxes, the ones deemed unworthy of Papa’s shelves. To us, the finely etched blue images on the scarab’s surface seem a clue to a crucial mystery, one we’ve contemplated, together and apart, for years. Consulting the British Museum Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities was necessary to ensure we aren’t on a fool’s errand.
“Well, Mr. Budge agrees with your theory that the scarab may have belonged to Hatshepsut,” Mr. Carter announces.
The news is as I’ve hoped. While I am overjoyed that this object is connected with one of the most successful rulers of ancient Egypt and one of the only female pharaohs, it still seems unbelievable. I almost pinch myself.
“Hatshepsut? Really?” I whisper, staring down at the scarab. My hand shakes at the thought it actually belonged to her.
“Yes, Hatshepsut. And, Mr. Budge said—” Mr. Carter says and then suddenly stops. His face has shut down completely, and I know only one person or thing that can cause that reaction.
I turn around to see a face icy with fury: Mama.
Chapter Three
JULY 21, 1919
HAMPSHIRE,ENGLAND
Everyone remarks on the unexpected perfection of the day. The clear blue skies with nary a threatening cloud on the horizon. The cooling shade of the cedar tree, grown from a seedling given to the first Earl of Carnarvon, under which the group sits on thick cotton blankets. We look out at the stunning beauty of the nearby Highclere Park folly, the Temple of Diana, and the vista of Dunsmere Lake itself beyond.
Everyone seems content but me. Because I would very much like to be somewhere else.
“You know, the parklands were designed by the famous eighteenth-century landscape gardener Capability Brown,” Mama announces to the guests, her chest puffing with pride as it does when she bestows a particularly exultant nugget. She cares for the history of Highclere primarily as it provides excellent fodder for conversation and the occasional comeuppance.
“Was it now?” Lady Milgrove asks, reaching for another lobster tail from the china tray proffered by Matthew, one of the few original servants of Highclere Castle who returned to us after the war. Her tone suggests that she’s dutifully impressed, the price exacted for my parents’ generosity this weekend. But I can see plainly that she’s more interested in pouring butter sauce on the lobster.
Mama glances over at my brother, Porchey, a nickname based on his title, Lord Porchester, to see if he’ll pick up the reins of this conversation.It is the future Lord Carnarvon’s duty, I can almost hear her think. But my brother is home on leave from his regiment, the 7thQueen’s Own Hussars, awaiting his next assignment to India or Mesopotamia, and is agog at the other young ladies here this weekend. As one of the few young men, he has his pick.
“Oh yes,” Mama answers with enthusiasm, when Porchey fails to chime in. Does Lady Milgrove’s lack of real interest not register? Perhaps it does, but Mama doesn’t care. Because she continues: “As I’m certain is evident, Capability Brown delighted in fostering the natural beauty of the landscape. And this folly, of course, helps punctuate that.”
In near comic unison, the three dozen or so guests turn to examine the round structure, encircled by columns, topped with an imposing dome, and perched high on the hill overlooking Dunsmere Lake. Although it appears ancient, it is an eighteenth-century confection that was reconstructed a hundred years later. Not that its manufactured quality has ever stopped me from visiting on my own and pretending I was in ancient Greece—anything to tether me to generations gone by. Is it because I feel so unbound to the present?
