Wrapped (12 page)

He stopped and pointed to a nondescript door.

“Difficult times,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders and brushed back a lock of hair that fell across his forehead. “He’s all right. Still awake about a thing or two. Forgotten more about Egypt than any of those triflers at the museum ever even knew, and if he was a spy—”

“Then who better to help us with cryptic messages about Napoleon smuggled into Britain by way of a mummy,” I finished for him. He nodded and looked at me again, something like curiosity in his expression, a look he might give to some oddity under glass in the museum.

He looked longer still, his expression perhaps sliding from curiosity to appreciation. Half-afraid of what might come next, I reached out and knocked hard and loud on the worn wood.

The action broke the spell, as my knock elicited a string of oaths from beyond the door.

“What?” growled a grizzled man as he pulled the door open a crack a moment later, bright blue eyes wincing in the light. First his gaze fell on me, annoyance morphing into confusion, then it found Caedmon, and his face relaxed. “Well done, lad,” he said. “Finally found yourself a girl.” The door fell open to admit us.

I balked. Caedmon sputtered, “We—we need your help.”

Deacon turned his back to us and hobbled toward a chair dwarfed by piles of books on either side. “Looks like you’re doing quite well—”

“Uncle,” Caedmon groaned.

I stepped across the threshold and spoke. “We’ve come to consult your expertise on another matter.”

“Who is she?” the man asked.

Caedmon found his voice again. “Er, sorry. Miles Deacon, meet Miss Agnes Wilkins.”

Miles Deacon eyed me carefully. “Your father Lord Wilkins?”

I swallowed the panic rising in me. If he somehow knew Father, he might even tell him before I had the chance to do so. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded. “Good man. Always a friend to the service.”

“I wasn’t aware Father had ties to the ordnance board.”

He shot me a look, then said to Caedmon, “What kind of nonsense have you been telling her about me?”

“Only that you might be able to help us with this,” Caedmon said hurriedly, reaching into his pocket and handing a small bundle of cloth to Deacon. The old man unfolded it.

“Humph,” he said, examining the jackal’s head. Then he squinted at the characters on the attached piece of linen. “Gibberish. You must know that, Caedmon.”

“He does,” I said, and quickly explained the object’s sordid history and our discovery of the hidden message. As I did so, Deacon’s face grew grave.

“Let me see the translation,” he ordered after I finished. Caedmon passed him the slip of paper. He read it, first to himself, then in a hushed voice aloud. We were quiet a full minute as we waited for him to say something.

“Bring the candle,” he commanded me, gesturing toward the tallow puddling on the mantel.

Deacon held the scrap to the flame and the message once again came into view. He read it, then leaned in and sniffed the linen.

“Written with lemon juice,” he said, sniffing again. “Or milk gone sour. Hard to tell the difference after a while.”

He sniffed a third time, his eyes closed. After a moment, he looked up. “Well,” he said, sighing, “you’ve found yourself in the middle of more trouble than you could ever hope to imagine.”

Chapter Eleven

Deacon was transformed. Gone was the scowl. Gone was the hunch in his shoulders. And he’d shed that prickly attitude like an overcoat in August.

“Tell me again how you came to possess this,” he commanded.

I repeated my story; this time he interrupted me with more questions, trying to place the date of the mummy’s arrival in England, the condition of the wrappings around the object, the behavior of the man who followed me through the gardens.

“And this was quite buried within?” he asked, tapping the iron of the jackal’s head with his fingernail.

I nodded and related my observation regarding the variation in color of the wrappings at the feet.

His face grew grave. “I warned them this would happen.”

I looked to Caedmon. Them? What would happen?

“Uncle?” he said, begging an explanation.

Deacon sprang to his feet. “I told the ministry years ago that French sympathizers would find new ways to smuggle their information across our blockades. Nobody fancied they’d be so bold as to conceal it within a body, but I knew it wasn’t beyond them. And Bonaparte has had spies in Egypt since we ousted him. Any one of them might have had access to a shipment bound for the museum, none of which are searched properly for contraband. . . .”

“Because anyone paying the expense of bringing them here would have a fit if the artifacts were disturbed before they’d made it to London. And if you’ve pockets deep enough to get the items, you can afford to bribe a port officer,” Caedmon finished.

“But why bother with Egypt? Wouldn’t Napoleon’s intelligence resources be better used within England, collecting information on our deployments and strategy?” I asked.

Deacon stopped and stared at me. “Got more of your father in you than just those eyes, haven’t you?” I blushed for the second time, and didn’t answer. He went on. “Boney’s got plenty of spies here in London working those angles, a few we know about, and too many we don’t. But to answer your question, it’s obvious he’s still looking for it.”

“Looking for
what
?” Caedmon asked.

“Come, boy. We’ve discussed this.” Deacon’s tone grew impatient.

Caedmon looked confused. “The standard from the message?”

“Of course the standard! It’s written right here, isn’t it?” he said, waving our transcription in the air.

“But
W
?” I said. “What is
W
?”

“Not what . . .
who
,” Deacon said ominously, letting the word echo in the silent room.

Caedmon clapped his hands abruptly, making me jump in my seat.

“Wepwawet!” he shouted, springing to his feet. He pounded one fist into his other hand and bolted for a stack of books in the corner.

I played the name over in my mind and, coming up with nothing, looked to Deacon.

“Wepwawet,” he began, reaching for the book Caedmon had extricated from the pile, “was an Egyptian deity. Very mighty. His cult”—he paused here to check the index in the giant volume, red leather creaking as the spine bent open—“was among the most powerful in all of Egypt, spreading the entire length of the Nile.”

“Cult?” I asked.

Caedmon took over as Deacon began thumbing through the moldy pages. “Religion in Egypt at the time wasn’t at all like it is today. There were thousands of recognized deities. A person had a great many more choices than, say, your average Londoner whose only real choice is which Church of England congregation to join.”

Deacon resumed the thread. “They simply ascribed greater devotion to one in particular. Sometimes their choice was based on geography. Sometimes on their vocation, or family tradition . . . or an appetite for influence,” he finished as he handed me the open book.

“Wepwawet’s cult was powerful?” I asked.

Caedmon nodded. “Wepwawet was the god of war, oversaw the funerary cult—”

“How many cults could one person fall in with?” I asked, staring at the drawing of a regal-looking man, heavily armored. In his hands, he held a pole. Atop this pole sat a figure on a stool. The figure had the body of a man, but the head of a jackal, long-snouted, with pointy ears.

I swung around to look at Caedmon. He nodded. “Wepwawet had the head and strength of a jackal. Cock of the walk, he was. And he could open the way between the living and the dead.”

Deacon broke in. “Hence his position of importance in the funerary cult. Anyone mummifying a loved one would have prayed to Wepwawet to speed the body and soul along to the afterlife, and the waiting judgment of Osiris or the keeping of Anubis. And with the vast number of mummified remains throughout Egypt—”

“His cult would have been enormous,” I finished.

“And,” Caedmon said, “because of the war bits, the pharaohs were devotees.”

“Then the cult
itself
was powerful as well.”

Deacon hesitated, gave a slight nod. “Somewhat. We can only rely on what little of the surviving historical record we’ve been able to translate. We can never know if it was the cult’s high-level membership that made it influential, or if the magic itself merely attracted those souls. The Ptolemys were particularly devout.”

“Ptolemy from the Rosetta Stone inscription,” Caedmon supplied.

“But the message,” I said, shaking my head. “Unless Napoleon intends to have himself mummified, what does Wepwawet have to do with—”

“He’s after the standard,” Caedmon said.

“Why
now
?” Bonaparte commanded some half a million men at present, a force larger than any he’d ever assembled. The papers indicated that they were marching on Brussels, with the Prussians and English poised to converge on him.

Deacon leaned toward me. “He took forty thousand troops into Egypt, where he knew he’d find no opposition, and proceeded to occupy the entire Nile Delta, sending out archaeological teams. He’d dug up half the country by the time England decided we couldn’t allow him a strong base from which to threaten our empire in India.”

“And some say he still hadn’t found what he’d come for in the first place,” Caedmon interjected.

“This standard?” I guessed. Both men nodded solemnly. “But how did he even know to look for it?”

“Boney’s an odd one,” Deacon said, “which is what’s made him so difficult to outflank all these years. He’s as taken with Egypt and the Old Kingdom as he is with overthrowing royals and chasing women. And he’s been after that standard for ages.”

“But it’s just a hunk of metal!” I protested.

Deacon took too long to reply. “I saw things in Egypt that I cannot explain. Things that haunt me still.” He shifted in his seat, stared out the dingy window, and shook his head softly, remembering.

“But you can’t believe that this standard actually has some sort of supernatural power?”

He looked at me. “I don’t
disbelieve
it,” he said carefully, his caution eerily reminiscent of Showalter’s two mornings ago at breakfast.

Caedmon went on, “If what we reckon from the history is right, the standard could only be wielded by true kings.”

“And Napoleon certainly fancies himself that,” Deacon agreed.

“But what can it possibly do besides fetch a premium from a collector? Why would he bother looking for it now?”

Deacon shifted in his seat. “All the available sources indicated three things about the standard’s mystical properties. First, it meant that the bearer could not be defeated in battle. Second, it assured that the bearer—when he did die—would ascend immediately to the skies and bypass the potential unpleasantness of judgment and the underworld.”

“But that’s just superstition, isn’t it?” I asked, looking uncertainly to Caedmon.

Deacon and Caedmon were quiet long enough to exchange a glance, long enough to indicate that neither was ready to discount any rumor regarding the standard’s power. “There is still more,” Deacon said quietly. “It is also said that whoever bears the standard can summon Wepwawet’s power to bridge the kingdoms of the living and the dead.”

“I don’t understand.” The room seemed to grow colder.

“It means,” Caedmon said gently, “that the pharaoh who carried it could resurrect an army of the dead to fight alongside his living soldiers.”

“Now you’re trying to scare me!” I forced a laugh.

Neither Deacon nor Caedmon cracked a smile.

Finally I found my voice. “But that’s preposterous! There can be no more power in this thing”—I pointed toward the drawing in the book—“than there is in a cup of twice-steeped tea leaves.”

“If I learned anything in my time in Egypt,” Deacon said, “it’s that the foolish man disrespects legend. And foolish men did not survive. There are powers and things beyond our understanding. And if history is correct, this standard is one of the most powerful weapons ever forged.”

I realized I desperately wanted a rational explanation. “All of London is now mad with notions of the mummy’s curse, but we know it’s someone searching for this!” I waved the jackal’s head before them.

“Fair point,” Deacon said. “So let’s suppose that the standard really is nothing but a plate of bronze with a harmless figurine atop it. Consider the example you just shared with me. You said yourself that all of London is under the spell of this mummy curse. They have almost
no
evidence to support it, but the idea has taken hold nonetheless.”

“Museum attendance has increased tenfold since Showalter’s party,” Caedmon offered.

Deacon nodded. “Compare that fervor with what might result from an actual object once carried by the rulers of the world’s first empire. An empire ruled by kings revered as gods.”

“Men like Napoleon,” I whispered.

He nodded. “Think on it, Miss Wilkins. Bonaparte has already cheated death countless times, and politically resurrected himself from death twice. He’s done the impossible again and again. He stands poised to overrun the Continent, leaving little hope that England will be able to outlast him. He enjoys almost fanatical adoration from his people. So give that man an object that supposedly gives him complete invulnerability . . . and the power to raise an army of ghost soldiers from the millions of Frenchmen who’ve died for his cause—”