“No, not yet. In fact, I think I was one of the first in Luxor to hear of it. And I was hoping we could use that advantage to help get Lady Carnarvon and your daughter on a ship, before they fill up—”
Mr. Carter interrupts him, “Or before the mobs stop them from leaving the ports.”
“Exactly,” Mr. Peacock concurs.
Surely they can’t be serious. They cannot mean that we willleaveEgypt. Between the travel and the obligatory time in Cairo, it has taken me longer to get to the Valley of the Kings than I’ve spent at the site. And I am not optimistic that Mama will permit me ever to come to Egypt again.
“No, Papa,” I say.
“No what? I don’t even have a plan yet,” he barks, irritated at my preemptory defiance.
Mr. Peacock pipes in. “I have taken the liberty of researching the routes, and there is a ship leaving from Port Said tomorrow in the late morning. If you get on the overnight train and make the necessary connections, you might just be able to make it.” He pauses, seemingly uncertain about pushing further. “There are four tickets left on that ship.”
Uncharacteristically, Mr. Carter makes a decision on behalf of Mama and me. “Then, we’ve got to get Lady Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn two of those tickets.”
Papa nods. “Yes, yes. Almina, you and Eve must race upstairs and pack the essentials. Just enough to get you through the journey home. We don’t have time for you to fill the trunks if you are to catch the overnight train.”
“You make it sound as though Eve and I are going on alone.” Mama’s voice is leery.
“You are. I shall stay on,” Papa says.
“You can’t mean that.” Mama’s tone borders on hysteria.
“Almina.” Papa reaches for her hand, an unusual gesture. I rarely see my parents touch. “What is safe for you and what is safe for me are two very different things. I would be wildly remiss in my duties as a husband and father if I allowed you and Eve to remain in Egypt during an uprising.”
“But what about you? Please don’t put yourself at risk,” Mama begs.
“Almina, I’m going to reach out to Allenby to see if I can help negotiate away this situation, and I will hardly be at risk in his company. I know both King Fuad and Zaghloul—he and I have spent some jolly times at the track. Perhaps I can help informally bridge the different factions.”
“Porchey,” Mama pleads. Only when she is desperate does she call Papa by his nickname, the same as my brother’s. Papa was once Lord Porchester as well. “Please don’t put yourself in harm’s way for the Egyptians.”
“It isn’t only for the Egyptians, Almina. It’s for us as well. We can hardly excavate in the middle of a civil war.”
My head is spinning. How can this be happening on the eve of my first find?
“If it’s safe with High Commissioner Allenby, then why can’t we stay? We would be with you,” I implore him. “Papa, I’ve only just got here.”
He gazes over at me. His eyes are sad, but his tone is firm. “Eve, I am sorry, my dear. We’ve got to get you on that ship. But Ipromiseyou’ll be back.”
The Queen
Chapter Twenty
1483BC
THEBES,EGYPT
The drums beat low and slow, reverberating deep within me. I walk in time with the rhythm until it matches the thumping of my heart. I feel at one with the musicians and the priests and the royals and the viziers and the dignitaries and the thousands of citizens marching in this funeral procession since dawn—to bury my father, Pharaoh Thutmose.
How could he be dead? The vibrant ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt who raised our land to new heights in trade, military expansion, building projects, even artwork? The father who made me his pupil in the three seasons before his death? It seems impossible that he should be gone, leaving me—and a nation—bereft.
I’ve had seventy long days as my father’s body was being readied for the afterlife to grow accustomed to the reality of his passing. Yet, I still expect him to glance over at me from his golden sedan chair—carried aloft on the strong shoulders of his men—and bestow upon me a small, wry, unexpected smile. I cannot envision him lying deep within the gold and lapis lazuli sarcophagus, his canopic jars arranged around him like a flower, on the oxen-pulled sledge at the head of the procession.
The cries of the Kites of Nephthys interrupt my musings. Walking alongside the sledge, these women, dressed from head to toe in the blue-gray color of mourning with matching powder on their faces, are skilled in the art of mourning and appease the gods with their shrieking and beating of their breasts. None of us royals are toweep and so they do it for us. And anyway, we are meant to believe there is no need for sorrow, as my father has simply begun an entirely new journey to the afterlife.
But I mourn.
The procession reaches the east bank of the Nile, and there await several mortuary barges. My mother and I step onto the lead barge and stand at the prow on either side of the sarcophagus. We are joined by two women who symbolize the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, here to assist with my father’s journey to the afterlife. Sailing from the east side of the Nile, which symbolizes life, we cross its wide blue waters to the west bank, which represents the land of the dead.
